Dean L Wilde II

is an entrepreneur having started a number of successful businesses with cumulative revenues exceeding $2 billion. His current focus is with DC Investment Partners to help other founders start and grow successful companies.

Dean started his career as a strategy consultant with Strategic Planning Associates, which later became Oliver Wyman, where he created and lead the Telecommunications and Technology practice in the US and Europe.

He co-founded Dean & Company in 1993, a strategy consultant firm that provides due diligence for private equity firms and strategies for bottom-line improvement for portfolio companies and for Fortune 500 firms. Its distinctive focus is in using data and analytic methods to identify and capture profit opportunities.

Dean co-founded DC Energy in 2002.  DC Energy is now a leading financial participant in the electricity markets. DC Energy ranks consistently amongst the top five in congestion trading in North America.

Dean then co-founded Nodal Exchange in 2007.  Nodal is the rare instance of a new business earning the status of a CFTC designated contracts market and clearing house in North America.  It has a leading position in energy contracts, along with ICE and CME, and is now the largest financial exchange in volume and open interest serving the electricity congestion and zonal power markets.  Early round investors included NextEra and Macquarie. The business is now wholly owned by Deutsche Boerse/EEX.

Dean co-founded Dean Capital Investments Management,  a proprietary hedge fund manager.  It trades global equities, bonds, derivatives and commodities by employing a rigorous analytic approach to assess fundamental drivers of value.

Mr. Wilde currently serves on the board of Bessemer Securities, the investment firm managing the Trusts of Henry Phipps Jr., one of America’s iconic entrepreneurs, who was a partner with Andrew Carnegie and involved in founding of the Carnegie Steel Company.

Prior to his business success, Dean was born and raised in South Dakota. He holds degrees from Iowa State University, 1978, in physics, where he graduated as Top Scholar, and from the MIT Sloan School of Management, 1980, where he earned a Masters of Science in Management with a concentration in Finance. He has served on the faculty of MIT, where he taught courses in economics and strategy at Sloan.  He is co-author with former MIT Professor Arnoldo Hax of the popular strategy text “The Delta Project, discovering new sources of profitability in a networked economy”.

Fun fact: During his time at Iowa State, Dean went door to door in rural south dakota during the summer and sold medicare supplement insurance to pay his way through college.