Venture Capital | ESG | Managing Director @ Checkmate Capital

Learning By Doing – Dennis (Dony) Zaidi

“Luck is when skill meets opportunity”

My passion is to help ventures that want to make the world a better place become big companies with even bigger impact.

Companies usually begin with little more than a dream: a concept, an idea, or an invention. But while hope, inspiration, and some personal savings can be the promising seed for a startup, it often takes much more to grow a concept into a thriving company; it takes venture finance.

I am a venture capital and private equity professional with 15 years of experience in a diverse array of verticals including energy, clean tech, agtech, and life sciences / health tech.

I strive to be the bridge between the world’s biggest dreams and the capital needed to make those dreams a reality. Along with embracing the lessons learned from having played a lead role in three successful exits, I also use a toolkit of formal entrepreneurship focused education from the world’s top universities (HEC Paris, Harvard, Oxford) and certification bodies to help founders achieve scalability and profitability.

I draw from a diverse array of advanced story telling skills to execute on this mission. As a certified data science professional and financial analyst, I can create clear financial models to communicate valuations and returns for even the most complex M&A transactions or disruptive business models. I have also won over eighteen international