DC Palter is a startup founder with 25 years’ experience building and leading tech companies and two successful exits. As a venture investor and startup mentor at UCLA, USC, and other accelerators, he’s helped hundreds more get started. His weekly articles on Medium on business strategy and venture capital are followed by over 30,000 readers. His blog, Pitching Angels, is a popular resource for founders. 

Starting his career as a research engineer in Japan where he lived in Tokyo and Kobe, DC developed a deep appreciation for Japanese language and culture. He’s the editor-in-chief of Japonica, a daily journal of Japanese culture, and the author of Colloquial Kansai Japanese, the leading English-language guide to the Osaka-Kyoto dialect of Japanese. A Japanese language instructor and translator, he is the only non-Japanese native certified by the Japan Society as a Japanese language instructor. He is also a certified sake professional. 

DC holds an MFA in creative writing along with degrees in engineering, marketing, and law. His short fiction has been published in literary magazines in the US and Japan while his articles on technology and investing have appeared in over 100 publications and journals. 

He currently resides in the Silicon Beach area of Los Angeles together with his wife, the famous ikebana artist, Satsuki Palter. To Kill a Unicorn is his first novel.