Donald Stalter

Founder, Sunshine Lake

True alpha doesn’t come from the obvious path. It comes from founders navigating extreme constraints — that shared psychological DNA that turns global outsiders into category leaders. We back that hunger from the very first check.

Donald Stalter founded Sunshine Lake, a seed fund that backs global breakout founders who leverage the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

Don generates proprietary deal flow through a dense network of unicorn founders and elite functional operators. He applies a rigorous, systematic approach to ensure Sunshine Lake identifies and executes on premier investments before the broader market reacts.

Before he launched Sunshine Lake, Don served as the North American Managing Partner for Global Founders Capital (GFC) for nearly a decade.

Don’s hands-on operational background directly shapes his investment philosophy. He co-founded CityDeal, scaled the business, and sold it to Groupon for over $100 million. Subsequently, he restructured Groupon Japan on the ground during the Fukushima disaster. Later, he joined Airbnb and scaled its presence across Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions against fierce local competition. At Airbnb, he also built the Long-Term Stays and high-end tier divisions — multi-billion-dollar initiatives that drive significant revenue today.

Earlier in his career, Don worked in London private equity. He began as a San Francisco M&A banker and executed multi-billion-dollar cross-border transactions, including multiple landmark buy-side deals for Google.

Don attended the University of Chicago, studied under Nobel Laureates, and completed a year of study at the Free University of Berlin.