Desert Forge Ventures Founder Shares 'Act, Adjust, Absorb' Playbook

A venture capitalist who built an early-stage fund focused on the Las Vegas startup ecosystem says the discipline that shaped his investing came from a doctoral seminar where he once felt he didn't belong. The founder of Desert Forge Ventures has distilled decades of entrepreneurship and venture investing into a three-step framework he calls Act, Adjust, Absorb, laid out in an Entrepreneur contributor essay.

The fund manager's core argument is blunt: waiting for certainty guarantees stagnation. Early in his career, he writes, "I was mentally editing every thought before I let it leave my mouth." He eventually flipped that instinct into a personal rule: "If I'm not embarrassing myself at least once a day, I'm probably not pushing myself hard enough."

What does 'Act' mean in practice?

The first leg of the framework rejects both extremes of the readiness debate. "'Move before you're ready' is terrible advice if it means ignoring evidence," he writes. Leaders should hunt for a sufficient signal rather than rare, total certainty.

When he began exploring what became Desert Forge Ventures, he didn't have every detail worked out. He talked to people who understood the opportunity, challenged his assumptions, and looked for evidence the idea could work.

Two conversations shaped the fund directly:

• His nephew, deeply involved in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, helped him frame and focus the fund and prepare for the wave of AI startups he saw coming.
• A friend in Tucson, who founded venture funds focused on the University of Arizona, refined the fund's Las Vegas positioning and shared the legal documents from his first fund as a practical template.

The point, he stresses, is not to seek validation. Ask questions that might prove you wrong: What am I missing? What has to be true for this to work? Where could this fail? At some point, he writes, more analysis stops reducing risk and starts postponing action. That's the moment to move.

How did the first two deals force an adjustment?

The fund's opening investments delivered the lesson behind step two: make the first move small enough to learn from.

Desert Forge launched with a thesis built on deep tech emerging from university labs, and the first two investments fit it perfectly. Both companies, however, wanted substantial lead investments — more, he admits, than the fund was ready to make. He agreed to move forward while still raising the necessary capital, which put the young fund in a difficult position.

The fix required real adjustment. The team accelerated fundraising, recalibrated conversations with investors, and got deliberate about communicating timelines to both sides. The experience produced a rule he still applies: move early on reversible decisions, but proceed carefully when decisions create obligations for others.

He now pressure-tests every consequential commitment with five questions:

• What assumption am I testing?
• What is the smallest credible move I can make?
• What has to be true for this to work?
• Who becomes dependent on us if I say yes?
• What evidence would cause me to accelerate, change course, or stop?

Why 'Absorb' is the step leaders skip

Most leaders act and adjust but skip absorption, he argues. They get busy and move on. His remedy is a weekly habit: identify one conversation, question, or decision you've been avoiding, address it early, then reflect on three questions — what did I expect would happen, what actually happened, and what did I learn?

Running the fund changed how he thinks about readiness. He no longer asks only whether he's ready to move; he asks whether the people and resources affected by the decision are ready. He separates what he knows from what he believes from what still needs testing.

"Experience should give leaders more than confidence," he writes. "It should give them better filters."

What's the payoff of the framework?

Consistently applied, Act, Adjust, Absorb becomes a process for comparing feared outcomes with actual ones. Over time, you build evidence: the supposedly stupid question often reveals others were confused too, and respectful disagreement rarely ends in catastrophe.

Earlier in his career, uncertainty felt like evidence he wasn't ready. "Today, I see it as my judgment zone," he writes. He closes with Goethe: "Doubt can only be removed by action."

For founders weighing their next move, the message is a decision protocol, not a pep talk: act on sufficient evidence, adjust when reality pushes back, absorb the lesson — and let the next decision be better than the last.