Our founder, Katelyn Gallanty, named the firm after her grandfather, who went from mailroom to boardroom without a college degree. That's the spirit we bring to every founder we work with.
We believe crazy is possible. It's just a matter of planning and execution. In practice that means we spend months inside a business before anyone talks to an investor: strategy, materials, financial model, cap table. We call it being shiny on the inside and the outside.
The work isn't glamorous. We ask the questions investors will ask, and we keep asking until the answers hold up. Sometimes that means telling a founder they aren't ready yet. We would rather have that conversation early than waste an investor's time, which is also why investors take our calls.
Katelyn founded GDG because founders who dream big and execute with rigor deserve capital from investors who understand what it takes to get there. Her career has been defined by two turns that showed her both sides of the capital equation. At Citi, she was selected to take a cross-border payments concept with embedded FX hedging from idea to a globally commercialized product in 18 months. Wells Fargo then recruited her to run commercialization for its entire FX payments unit across eight client segments. Citi brought her back to build a national private banking practice for founders and entrepreneurs, which she grew from zero to 175 clients and $3B in assets under management in 2.5 years.
Brian leads growth strategy, venture sourcing, and capital-markets engagement - a corporate venture builder who has spent over a decade on both Main Street and Wall Street. Investment banking at Goldman Sachs, bank operations at BNY Mellon, startup commercialization and distressed cash-flow management at WeWork, and franchise growth-equity systems at SMB Franchise Advisors. From 2021 to 2023, he relaunched a multinational bank's North American innovation initiative, scouting investment, acceleration, and partnership opportunities across the startup ecosystem. That range - institutional capital on one side, operating reality on the other - means he knows what investors look for and what founders actually need to deliver.
Jesse drives founder engagements across financial services and digital assets, bringing over two decades in institutional equities, corporate venture capital, and digital-asset strategy. At Ally Financial and Citi Ventures he held senior roles leading investment mandates, ecosystem development, and strategic partnerships spanning the TradFi-to-crypto continuum. That work put him on both sides of the table, with operators building companies and allocators deciding where capital goes. He draws on those relationships across the capital-markets and venture ecosystem to support founders' fundraising and strategic-growth goals.