Daniel is a descendant of the ancient lineage of “Herr” the Noble Schwabish Knights of Bilried. Its knights were brave and worthy… its true! okay okay, on a more serious note:
Daniel received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Cornell University in 2007 and immediately returned back to the west in pursuit of outdoor adventure and entrepreneurial opportunities.
After a few stints in Civil Engineering and real estate development, Daniel joined a start-up called the Clean Energy Center in Reno, Nevada, quickly realized the need for leadership, took the helm and with his colleague Patrick Baldwin, grew the company from $75,000 to $2.5M in annual sales in two years. CEC was a design and installation contractor focused around energy efficiency, wind resource development and renewable energy systems including Solar Photovoltaics, Solar Thermal, Wind Energy, and LED lighting. Through Patrick and Daniel’s efforts the Clean Energy Center completed a number of flagship Solar projects (including the City of Ely EECBG Project with JCI), was recognized in 2011 as a leader in the state of Nevada and received the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology’s “Green Technology Company of the Year” Award.
In the fall of 2011 Daniel began building the Sontag Entrepreneurship Competition at the University of Nevada, Reno in pursuit of his Masters in Business Administration (which he received in May, 2013) while continuing to pursue his goal of working in Private Equity & Venture Capital.
In 2013, Daniel was awarded Entrepreneurial Program of the Year by EDAWN at the NCET Awards for his work in creating Project Vesto (www.ves.to) – the $100,000 seed capital competition.
In 2014 and beyond Daniel has taken a deeper dive into Private Equity with Castle Crow & Company in Tahoe and San Francisco, advising private business owners and subsidiaries/divisions of public companies regarding growth equity, leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, recapitalizations, minority equity investments and mezzanine capital investments. Daniel quickly found success receiving LOI’s for two $20m+ TEV businesses within his first 6 months. In October, 2015 Daniel closed his first significant Private Equity transaction – a $300m revenue IT Solutions company. Since that time, Private Equity transactions in-which Daniel has played an integral part include:
- Stonebridge Partners‘ acquisition of Gemini Electronic Components, Inc. as an an add-on for American Distributors Inc.
- RPM International’s (NYSE: RPM) acquisition of Adhere Industrial Tapes (UK)
- Axalta’s (NYSE: AXTA) acquisition of Ellis Paint (support team)
- New Water Capital’s recap of Sea Link International (research director)
- The Jordan Company / DiversiTech’s acquisition of Cliplight Manufacturing (research director)
- New State Capital Partners’ recapitalization of NWN Corporation
In 2018, Daniel joined LMM private equity firm Serent Capital, leading investing in education technology and hospitality technology SaaS end markets and building the proprietary sourcing and marketing functions in San Francisco and Austin. Over the course of Daniel’s tenure, the sourcing function grew from 4 to 13 individuals, tripling annual capital deployment, investing Serent’s fund III ($550M) and fund IV ($750M) in high growth, recurring revenue B2B SaaS businesses throughout the US and Canada.
In early 2022, Daniel departed from Serent to launch his own venture. Stay tuned for more.
Daniel’s Vision
Daniel’s aim is to provide great value with creative solutions and determination. He has a vision for the future with an firm that invests in, creates and builds valuable, sustainable, and profitable businesses. Daniel may not create every business from the ground up, but he loves to iterate upon great ideas, understand them from the roots up, simplify their purpose, refine and redefine the approach, and act strategically to better the value proposition of businesses to the world. Daniel believes in helping people achieve success by enabling them to perform more effectively. He has the technical background to dig into any problem and the management experience for critical big picture decisions. Quality enterprises make the world a better place… that is Daniel’s game.
What Daniel values and looks for daily:
- to be challenged
- to learn from my surroundings
- to work extremely hard and be appropriately compensated
- to work on some of our world’s toughest problems
- to work with and for people who intellectually challenge me
- to be surrounded with hard-working, caring, and passionate people
- to make significant time for recreation and family
- to find humor and joy in the comedy of life
- to respect and enjoy the natural environment
- to believe whole-heartedly in my endeavours
I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn or @DanHerr on Twitter; I would love to hear from you. Also, if you have not done so I invite you to browse my Blog.
DanHerr.com 
Hello Dan,
Came across you on the GrowVC site. Let me know if you ever head out to Portland, OR.
Best,
Sean
Hi Sean, I do actually make it to Portland from time to time. My parents live in Beaverton where my dad is the GM of Forrest Heights HOA. Wow, Earth Advantage looks pretty sweet! I actually just teamed up with a local company called Better Green Building Company here in Reno to start pushing home performance contracting and am taking my LEED GA test next week. Do you guys work outside of Oregon?
Hi Daniel, love your Blog, your actual educational and career goals, and your approach to live. I am so proud of you! Jr.
Thanks Junior!
Sweet blog! You are a very interesting person Dan Herr. I think we have similar beliefs. No matter what I am doing, or where I’m going, I keep my hands, heart, and soul in the dirt.
Thanks Kristen!
Hi Dan,
Just stumbled upon your website with the Lehman Formula calculator as I was looking for finder fee calculators. I was wondering if you could tell me your thoughts on the business model for SolarCity, in particular their securitization mechanism they use to fund future growth.
Best,
Omar Khanataev
Omar,
Thanks for the comment and glad you came across my site.
In general I like the idea of securitization as a funding model for SolarCity et.al. from a homeowner and installer point of view, but I have massive concerns about the business models around decentralized solar these days from an investor point-of-view especially given recent events in places like Nevada. The economics of solar are extremely fragile at best, and with volatile (and continually low for the foreseeable future) O&G-based energy prices, I just don’t see financed solar without incentives as viable nearly as soon as many where expecting.
What happens when all these folks that have installed Solar on their houses as an asset-backed security are overwhelmed by the “cheap” debt they have been incentivized to take on in the past few years during the next downturn? Unless the installation is part of a special purpose utility district where the system can be considered senior to many debts (which Fannie and Freddie all but killed for residential), thousands and thousands of used and depreciated solar PV systems will need to be repossessed and liquidated. Why should anyone pay SolarCity once they are struggling financially when they can get all this cheap power from the utility company now because of the prices of natural gas. In the 2009-2013 time-frame everyone expected that O&G would continue to rise while prices of Solar PV would develop economies of scale, making the whole model work – and solar securitization was a huge topic in 2013. All that is simply to say: I have spent a number of year of my life selling, financing, installing, and pushing Solar PV as a whole, but today Solar PV is not an industry in which I would want to be involved.
After the next correction, it might be worth another look.
Dan
Thank you for the reply, that was very helpful.
Re:uber.why not just register your car (or cars) in both California and Nevada, then mabey with two different devices (possibly another person also ) then as a team work one side at a time ,then one could hand off their phone and like magic one person works both sides.????
Mark – good question. As far as I know Uber limits your driving based upon your drivers license as much as the registered location of your vehicle. Maybe there is some part of it that I don’t know, but in all my dealings with CA & NV DMV’s, they have never once allowed me to have a valid drivers license in both states at the same time.