Last summer, when I met Daniel Dart for the fourth or fifth time, he told me he’d just finished getting two master’s degrees at the London School of Economics and was at the MIT Sloan School of Management to get an MBA. He was also starting a venture capital fund backed by some prominent investors and getting informal advice from titans of finance including Josh Friedman, John Arnold, Jack Selby, and Gary Cohn.
It’s not unusual to meet that sort of overachiever at financial events like the one I was attending, a confab in northern Maine sponsored by David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors, to get story ideas from business and financial leaders.
Except for one thing: Daniel Dart is an ex-con who spent roughly four years in prison for shoplifting, car theft, and carjacking, and never earned a high school diploma or bachelor’s degree. He was also homeless for more than a year, and could…
