Investors Overseeing Nearly $1 Trillion Gather in Fort Worth

Close to $1 trillion in assets under management converged on the Fort Worth Stockyards last week, as roughly 100 institutional investors, CEOs, sports executives and academics gathered for the third annual Rock Yard Roundup.

Austin-based venture capitalist Daniel Dart, founder of Rock Yard Ventures, said the attendees at his event represented the combined figure. The first two editions took place in Austin. For the third, Dart chose Fort Worth — a deliberate pick. He wanted the gathering somewhere "unpretentious."

"There's something about Fort Worth that has a timeless spirit," said Dart, who is originally from Los Angeles. "It's the original Cow Town."

This year's event was co-hosted by Greg Lippmann, founder and CIO of New York-based hedge fund LibreMax Capital; Oleg Nodelman, San Francisco-based founder of biotech-focused investment firm EcoR1 Capital; and Robert Forsythe, co-founder and CEO of Tampa-based family office Third Lake Capital.

Attendees discussed the nation's financial and technology sectors, from biotechnology regulation to co-investing. They also networked while watching bull rides and getting fitted for custom-made cowboy hats. Many attendees had never seen Fort Worth before.

Dart's goal has always been building camaraderie that pierces the buttoned-up facades of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and even Dallas' Y'all Street.

Beyond the coasts

John Moncrief, partner at Moncrief Properties, the commercial real estate company tied to his prominent Fort Worth oil family, said the unstructured elements of the conference left him with new relationships and conversations to reflect on.

"The speakers and attendees weren't cookie-cutter tech founders or finance professionals," Moncrief said in an email. "They were independent thinkers willing to challenge conventional wisdom."

The San Francisco Bay Area may still be the preeminent place to fund companies, said Chad Rigetti, CEO and co-founder of Sygaldry Technologies. But Rock Yard Roundup showed that promising companies can attract venture funding outside the Northern California hub.

"You had investment managers and fund managers and investors representing an enormous amount of capital at this very small event. It's a very casual but hyper competent vibe," said Rigetti, whose Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company builds quantum accelerated AI servers.

One panel featured Chad Blankenship, president and general manager of the Ariat Texas Rattlers, who told the story of the 20 cowboys who founded Fort Worth-based Professional Bull Riders in 1992. Each cowboy invested $1,000 in the company. Spire Capital acquired it in 2007. It later sold to Endeavor Group, and in 2025 Professional Bull Riders, ON Location and IMG were acquired by sports and entertainment company TKO Group Holdings in a transaction valued at $3.25 billion.

"The participants there are really high grade and successful investors and business people from family offices and institutional investors and otherwise, and they were really interested in meeting an authentic cowboy and hearing about a wildly successful cowboy business," Blankenship said.

An outlaw's path to finance

Dart said he was in and out of jail and prison growing up in California, caught up in street life before earning two master's degrees from the London School of Economics and later an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He said he was glad to escape street life, but it gave him something he believes is undervalued in the U.S. today: community. That drive to build community among the country's sprawling set of moneymakers led him in part to start Rock Yard Roundup.

Some of the country's most prominent investors helped mentor Dart when he launched Rock Yard Ventures, including Houston's John Arnold and Dallas-based Canyon Partners founder Josh Friedman.

An invitation to this year's event said it was inspired by the "lineage of the rebel and the outlaw," citing the Freemasons and unions as examples.

Dart said he has watched a national pivot among investors toward manufacturing and industries within the U.S.

"People are starting to look at, 'How do we build at home?'" Dart said. "Fort Worth captured that more so than in New York or San Francisco."