Our Mission
Like cairns marking a mountain trail, we share curated insights to help innovators navigate the startup landscape. Our mission is to guide founders, startups, and investors from basecamp to summit.
Read more
Like cairns marking a mountain trail, we share curated insights to help innovators navigate the startup landscape. Our mission is to guide founders, startups, and investors from basecamp to summit.
Read moreIn the mountains, cairns are stacks of stones placed by experienced hikers to guide those who follow. They mark the path when the trail is unclear, warn of danger, and point toward the summit.
The startup journey is much the same. The path is rarely clear, the terrain shifts constantly, and the summit can feel impossibly far away. That's why we built Startup Cairns — to share the mental models, frameworks, and insights from those who have navigated the path before.
Every article is a cairn on the trail — a marker left by an experienced guide to help the next generation of founders, startups, and investors find their way.
Paul Asel has co-founded and led four successful financial firms. As Founding and Managing Partner of NGP Capital, Paul built and led a global venture fund with $1.7 billion assets under management for two decades with offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. His insights shared on Startup Cairns are from work with hundreds of successful entrepreneurs. He is an early investor and served on 27 startup Boards, including 8 unicorns with over $25 billion in combined enterprise value.
