David Wanek and the value of waiting

A bottle appeared on David Wanek’s desk. Then another. A colleague was introducing him to wine, one ordinary working day at a time. The desk belonged to a career in technology finance; the bottles opened a door into agriculture. Eventually, that door led to a business in the Walla Walla Valley, where volcanic cobblestones lie beneath the vines and the calendar takes orders from the growing season.

“I would show up to work and find a bottle on my desk,” Wanek recalls. It is an appealingly modest origin for a wine enterprise. No revelation on a Tuscan hillside was required. Someone brought something worth trying, and he tried it. Office perks have taken stranger turns.

Today, Wanek is CEO and investment partner at Western Technology Investment, or WTI. He is also a co-founder of Cimento and a principal at Walla Walla Land Company. His two businesses put him on different sides of a familiar question: how do you give a promising undertaking enough resources to become a working business?

A degree with a job attached

His preparation crossed several disciplines. He earned a BS at the University of Kansas, an MBA at the University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Management, and a JD at Santa Clara University. Before WTI, his work included marketing, business development and legal positions at VeriSign, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Wanek’s introduction to technology began much earlier, through a grandfather who worked at Motorola. Later, while studying law, he worked on pricing and digital-certificate business models at VeriSign. He also helped create a startup incubator clinic. Those experiences put commercial problems beside legal ones: a company needed a viable offering, but it also needed the paperwork that would let it operate.

He joined WTI in 2000, while still a student, and graduated from Santa Clara Law in 2002. The internship became a career. There is something pleasing about that overlap. His professional direction was already taking shape while the formal qualification was still in progress. The lecture hall and the workplace were contributing to the same education.

What a founder buys with a loan

WTI lends to startups, offering debt capital intended to help finance growth while limiting equity dilution. The company dates to 1980, two decades before Wanek arrived. Its current description includes more than 1,500 portfolio companies and more than $7 billion in committed capital. Those are firm-wide figures, accumulated across its history and investment team.

The work reaches beyond a single moment of fundraising. WTI describes facilities that can grow with a company from seed stage through a public listing. Its partners are empowered to make decisions, a structure intended to keep the people dealing with a company involved in the response it receives. Wanek leads an organization built around that continuing relationship.

A useful example is Jun Group, the digital advertising business. WTI provided $2.5 million in venture debt in 2011. In January 2014, Jun Group announced a second $2.5 million round, bringing WTI’s commitment to $5 million. The additional money was designated for expanding teams, improving its technology platform and research and development.

Wanek praised Jun Group’s organic growth. The company’s founder, Mitchell Reichgut, explained the appeal from the borrower’s side: financing could support expansion while preserving independence. The sequence gives the relationship substance. WTI first supplied capital, then returned after the business had developed further. There was a company to observe between the two decisions.

RightsFlow offers another view. Founder Patrick Sullivan identified Wanek and WTI chairman Maurice Werdegar as leaders of its $1 million debt round. The business addressed music licensing at scale, serving labels, distributors and digital services. Google later acquired it. Sullivan also described subsequent investment from Wanek and WTI in Source3, his next copyright-licensing company, which Facebook acquired in 2017.

That connection is useful because it carries across two ventures. The financing relationship continued as the entrepreneur moved to a new company. The underlying commercial problem was also recognizable: making rights and licensing manageable for large digital platforms. For an investor whose background includes law and technology, it is a particularly apt corner of the market.

The clause that stays after the celebration

A funding announcement has a short life. The contract has a longer one. WTI’s transparency pledge sets out specific provisions it wants entrepreneurs to have in their loan agreements. A material adverse change, by itself, should not trigger default. Borrowers should not have to secure promises of continuing financial support from their investors or board members.

The pledge also rejects requirements to keep deposits at a designated bank and certain minimum financial ratios. It says insolvency should not permit accelerated repayment when the borrower can still pay debts as they fall due. These are the firm’s stated terms, and they make its approach more concrete than a general promise to be helpful.

The distinction matters to Wanek’s story because his job involves the structure of transactions as well as the decision to supply money. A founder wants funds available for the work ahead. A lender needs an agreement that defines obligations and remedies. The useful conversation happens where those interests meet, sentence by sentence.

Financing also has difficult endings. Next Step Living, the home-energy business in which Wanek led WTI’s investment, ceased operations in 2016. Its lenders ended up holding assets that included intellectual property. WTI and other owners were reported to be developing another company from those remnants. Wanek did not respond to requests for comment for that account.

That episode belongs beside the acquisitions and repeat financings. Startup lending involves companies whose plans can fail. A record of financing cannot be understood entirely through the businesses that eventually found buyers. The assets, contracts and remaining options matter when growth stops, too. Legal detail becomes decidedly less abstract at that point.

Buying the business behind the lending

By 2022, Wanek was CEO and president of Westech Investment Advisors, WTI’s management business. In August that year, P10 announced an agreement to acquire it. The announced consideration included $97 million in cash and approximately 3.9 million membership units exchangeable for P10 shares, with potential additional earnouts.

The proposed arrangement preserved the management team’s role in daily operations and investment decisions. WTI employees would retain the funds’ carried interest. For Wanek, the transaction put his organization inside a larger private-markets business while keeping the investment work with the existing team.

It also helps distinguish the different activities behind the initials. A management company operates the investment business; its funds supply financing. Wanek’s responsibilities span that organizational work and the individual transactions. The leadership position grew out of a tenure that began with an internship, rather than a sudden arrival at the top.

Three vineyards and a former cherry orchard

Cimento dates its beginnings to 2017. The attraction was a small appellation within the Walla Walla Valley: the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater. Its roughly 3,600 acres offered a setting in which the place itself could become recognizable in the product. The wine project depended on choosing land before choosing a finished bottle.

Wanek’s exploration included geologist Kevin Pogue. The team planted Orselli on a former cherry orchard and acquired Stone Valley and River Rock vineyards. Todd Alexander became the winemaker. The project combined newly planted land with established vines, giving the business different sites and histories to work with.

Wanek describes an ambition to use the team’s business experience to create an enduring operation. His emphasis falls on the people doing the farming and winemaking, and on a product capable of standing on its own. He describes patience as something the team can afford. In agriculture, that is a resource with a very literal use.

“We desire to expand upon our business backgrounds to build a long-lasting, sustainable business.”

David Wanek, on Cimento

The Rocks District’s boundary follows an ancient riverbed, with basalt cobblestones defining its ground. In wine, terroir means the environmental conditions of a place, including soil, climate and topography. Cimento’s bet rests on the idea that those conditions can produce a recognizable character. The rocks supply the setting; farming and winemaking still have work to do.

The growing season gets a vote

Cimento uses grapes grown in its own vineyards. Its inaugural release featured 2021 Syrah from Le Mani and Cabernet Sauvignon from San Tommaso. The first vineyard’s name honors the hands of farm workers. The second honors Tom Waliser, who planted it in 1998. The names place the labor and history on the label.

The Syrah spent 18 months in oak; the Cabernet, 22. Before either could reach that stage, the grapes had to pass through the season. In June 2021, the Pacific Northwest heat dome brought unusually high temperatures. Cimento’s account says the early timing avoided compromised fruit, and September brought conditions that supported even ripening.

Those details make the venture tangible. A financing schedule can be negotiated. The weather remains rather less interested in a conference call. Decisions about vineyards, farming and winemaking must survive whatever the season brings. The eventual bottle records both the planned work and the circumstances in which it happened.

A business with room at the table

Cimento’s ambitions extend to gatherings. The company describes a deliberately small customer list and plans for curated events around the country, including opportunities to explore wines beyond its own. A bottle can carry the vineyard’s character, but sharing it supplies another reason for the business to exist.

In April 2026, Wanek discussed his career and wine venture on Beats Vines and Life. The conversation joined his Nebraska upbringing, Silicon Valley work and Walla Walla interests in one account. The geographical distance is considerable. The practical questions are familiar: choose an opportunity, find people capable of working on it, and provide the resources to continue.

That is the interesting connection between Wanek’s desk and his vineyards. One undertaking gives young companies capital for the next stage. The other starts with land and waits for grapes, then wine. Both leave plenty to do after the initial investment. The bottle that once arrived at work now comes with a business behind it, and a growing season behind the business.