My name is David Tearse and I am an engineer, builder, and deep tech investor.

I’m originally from Wayzata, Minnesota and attended The Blake School where I played hockey and lacrosse. After high school, I played junior hockey around the country for two years. When I realized I wasn’t making it to the big show, I attended the University of Southern California to pursue a degree in Aerospace Engineering.

During my college career, I worked at a startup called Global Intelligence Trust. Global Intelligence Trust was a news site where we would publish original research articles on world topics.  I started out writing articles within the Innovation and Finance sectors before taking over as Director of Operations. During my nine months there, we grew the company to around 40 writers and 100k active users.

I joined Starburst Accelerator, an aerospace accelerator based in Los Angeles as a tech scout, in 2017. I was the lead scout for North America for 18 months and worked very closely with our main office in Paris.

I then moved to San Francisco to pursue a career in venture capital where I joined Larsen Jensen and Will Allen at Harpoon Ventures. Harpoon specializes in investing in startups with DoD applications and helps early stage startups secure contracts. I became their first hire back in 2019.

In March of 2020, I joined Skyryse as their Chief of Staff. Skyryse is a venture backed aerospace startup looking to reshape the transportation industry. During my time there I drove our fundraising and helped raise over a quarter of a billion dollars from investors such as Fidelity, ArrowMark Partners, Republic Capital, and Monashee. I helped grow the team from 20 to 125, build out a new HQ, and bring our business development backlog to just under a half a billion dollars.

I joined Riot Ventures as an Entrepreneur in Residence in summer of 2023 where I incubated Karman Industries.

We launched Karman in August of 2024 to revolutionize the industrial thermal energy space.

In my free time, I enjoy spending time with Bear, my Bernese Mountain Dog, skiing, shooting photos, camping, and just overall enjoying the beautiful state of California.