Sunshine Lake

founders forge the future.

Pre-Seed & Seed Fund

We write the first check into founders from extreme origins.

We're going after trillion dollar outcomes. Somewhere right now there's a Sergey Brin dropping out of a PhD program, a Jensen Huang sketching on a Denny's napkin, an Ilya Sutskever who believes everyone is thinking too small.

Don Stalter, Founder and General Partner at Sunshine Lake Capital

Founder

Don Stalter

Bulge-bracket PE and M&A, then scaled Airbnb across EU and APAC after selling CityDeal to Groupon. First checks into decacorns.

LinkedIn X Jefferies Interview Liquidity Podcast
Ivan La Frinere-Sandoval, Partner, CFO and COO at Sunshine Lake Capital

Ivan La Frinere-Sandoval

Partner, CFO & COO

Ivan was at SolarCity in the early days, reporting to Kimbal Musk, then founded Solar Union. Caltech, then Stanford. He runs the fund's operations and sits on our investment committee.

LinkedIn
Suhail Younus

Suhail Younus

Partner

Suhail went to Cornell and started in private equity. He leads sourcing and investments. Persian by background, he has a soft spot for the founder who looks wrong until they're obviously right.

LinkedIn
Wieger Lamers

Wieger Lamers

Platform Lead

Wieger came up inside Adyen and saw what it takes to go from a team of 11 in a small Amsterdam office to a global IPO. He runs EMEA sourcing and the platform team from London.

LinkedIn

Advisors

Esther Wojcicki
Esther Wojcicki

Godmother of Silicon Valley; the family behind YouTube and 23andMe.

Wikipedia ↗

What founders say

Jake Sussman, Headway

He hustled harder for me than anyone else did. I want him to be part of every single round and company that I start.

Jake Sussman

Headway

$2.3B

Tarek Mansour, Kalshi

With us from day zero, a tremendous supporter through the twists and turns of the journey that have made Kalshi a mainstream prediction market.

Tarek Mansour

Kalshi

$40B

Alex Bouaziz of Deel, with Don and Tarek Mansour

A fantastic partner and ally to Deel since its early days.

Alex Bouaziz

Deel

$17.3B

Jeremy Cai, Italic and Fountain

When you get the chance to work with this guy, run, don’t walk.

Jeremy Cai

Fountain

Katia Ameri, a16z

If I were to start another company, I would absolutely want to work with Don again.

Katia Ameri

a16z

Alex Kouts, Indigov

He was literally the first person to call me… it saved us.

Alex Kouts

Indigov, on SVB

Michael Tannenbaum, Figure

Don helped pull his entire portfolio away from SVB and redirected them to Brex.

Michael Tannenbaum

Brex, Figure

Ed Roman, Hack VC

His empathy gives him unfair access to deal flow.

Ed Roman

Hack VC

Mark Lawrence, SpotHero

If I could take money from Don again, I absolutely would.

Mark Lawrence

SpotHero

Lawrence Lin Murata, Slope

He hustles harder than any investor I’ve met.

Lawrence Lin Murata

Slope

Shri Ganeshram, Awning

At my current AI startup, if Don wants to invest, we’ll make room.

Shri Ganeshram

Gobi

Sunshine Lake Portfolio

Every blockbuster begins as a founder's story.

Craig O'Neill, Argentic

Led Versapay for nine-plus years through a take-private with Great Hill Partners. Now rebuilding B2B payments for the AI era.

🇨🇦

Craig O'Neill

Argentic
Dowling, Segal and Coppa, FullSeam

Built TaxProper through to an Opendoor acquisition. Now an AI teammate for finance teams: AP, AR, and reconciliation.

🇬🇧

Thomas Dowling, Geoff Segal & Aaron Coppa

FullSeam
Geoffrey Tisserand and Anji Ismail, Concord.ai

Sold Agora to PayScale; helped build Checkr into a $5B company. Now reskilling the global workforce for the AI era.

🇫🇷

Geoffrey Tisserand & Anji Ismail

Concord.ai
Samuel Adeyemo, Duranta

Co-founded Aurora Solar and scaled it to $4B. Now building foundation vision models that let machines understand the physical world.

🇰🇪

Samuel Adeyemo

Duranta
Thomas Dohmke, Entire

Ran GitHub and scaled Copilot. Now building the trust layer for the agent era, so the world can verify what machines build.

🇩🇪

Thomas Dohmke

Entire

A founder psychology that sparks movements.

Brian Chesky (Airbnb)
Brian Chesky (Airbnb)
Garry Tan (YC)
Garry Tan (YC)
Alex Bouaziz (Deel), Don, and Tarek Mansour (Kalshi)
Alex Bouaziz (Deel), Don, & Tarek Mansour (Kalshi)
Evan Spiegel (Snap)
Evan Spiegel (Snap)
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban
Thomas Dohmke (GitHub)
Thomas Dohmke (GitHub)
Ben Silbermann (Pinterest)
Ben Silbermann (Pinterest)
Henrique Dubugras (Brex)
Henrique Dubugras (Brex)
Lip-Bu Tan (Intel CEO)
Lip-Bu Tan (Intel CEO)
Julien Bek (Sequoia)
Julien Bek (Sequoia)

There’s no better time to build than when the world needs it most.

By Invitation

Sunshine Lake Speakeasy

Where unicorns, Midas Listers, and world-class operators build the future.

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