Top Tier Capital Partners built a business one layer above the startup pitch: backing venture funds, buying illiquid stakes, and following the strongest signals into growth companies. Its product is not a single bet but a carefully engineered view of the venture ecosystem.
Dave Thornton is the co-founder, CEO, and chief investment officer of Vested, a Miami-based fintech that funds startup employees to exercise their stock options before the 90-day post-departure window erases them. A serial entrepreneur who studied computer science, economics, and law, Thornton built Vested around a simple, painful truth he saw firsthand: roughly half of all employee stock options go abandoned, leaving an estimated $600 billion of value unclaimed. His pitch is to turn venture capital into something closer to an index fund - broad, diversified exposure to hundreds of startups - while giving everyday employees the cash and the clarity to actually keep the equity they earned.
Brian Yee is a General Partner at Saints Capital, a San Francisco firm that has spent 25+ years building one of the oldest direct and GP-led venture secondary platforms in the market. He invests across SMB software, e-commerce, marketplaces, and digital health, with a working range of $100K to $5M and a sweet spot near $1.5M. His background runs through Goldman Sachs (TMT investment banking), General Atlantic, and ACME Capital before settling into the secondaries seat at Saints.