ABOUT ME
Ricky Tejapaibul is the Managing Partner and CEO of Tech Wildcatters, one of the first 15 startup accelerators in the world and pioneer of the Gauntlet, a milestone-based data-driven accelerator model. Ricky is an active angel investor, entrepreneur, startup mentor, and has worked in various roles including management consulting, investing banking, and corporate finance for companies in the Fortune 500. Ricky earned multiple master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
MY INTERESTS
Angel Investing is one of my true passions and I love to involve myself in startups of all sizes and industries. One of the reasons I invest in early stage companies is so I can add additional value other than purely capital or financial engineering. I love being able to contribute and have sway in what happens in my investments.
I am an avid traveler. I have traveled the globe and have visited all 50 states on a journey to find the best startup ecosystem with the most potential, which is what brought me to Dallas. I love meeting new people, trying new things and learning along every step of the way.
Other broad interests of mine include eSports, food, entrepreneurship, startups, technology, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, Laser Tag, cars, and BBQ. I am a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) which helps me guide startups from an investor's mindset while my engineering background helps me appreciate their technology advancements.
In my free time, I enjoy attending sporting events as well as trying new restaurants and dives as well as traveling the globe. I'm always open to a conversation on where you should visit or what you should eat if you are ever looking for recommendations.
ABOUT TECH WILDCATTERS
I am the Managing Partner and CEO of Tech Wildcatters, a seed stage venture capital fund and accelerator program based in Dallas, Texas. Tech Wildcatters invests money, time and resources in promising startups.
Launched in 2009, Tech Wildcatters established itself as one of the first 15 accelerators in the world and fast became a leading, nationally-ranked accelerator by Forbes in 2012 and Inc. Magazine in 2015.
By the end of 2015, we’d invested in 72 startups, helped create more than 450 jobs and saw four exits. The market had also become extremely saturated, with an estimated 7,500 accelerators around the world with varying expertise, interests and quality standards.
As one of the longest running accelerators in the world, we’ve had the unique opportunity to obtain firsthand wisdom on what works (and what doesn’t) within an accelerator. We carry with us the knowledge on founders who make it, those who don’t, we have lessons learned, endless amounts of historical data and a peek inside the vision of those who mentor alongside us.
With that information in hand, we saw the need to initiate change within our market and fix the areas we know are not beneficial for our investors and are especially not beneficial for our startups. And in 2016, we broke our own model and introduced The Gauntlet.
We are now the first accelerator in the world to unveil what we believe the new accelerator should be — a genuinely smart decision for the startups who enter and the investors who buy in. We are now purely fueled by a 5-tier system infused with data, milestones and most importantly, ambition.