Sal Daher's path into venture is unusual—he trained as an engineer at MIT and Stanford, then spent decades in international finance and distressed emerging-market debt, including years navigating Argentina's economic turmoil, which shaped his view that an investor's job is less about picking winners and more about avoiding losers. He's also built a distinct identity around teaching and storytelling, recording 250 interviews with Boston founders and investors through Angel Invest Boston, and he stands out for believing a founder's ability to sell and recover from setbacks matters more than raw intelligence, while keeping a wide portfolio of 40 to 60 or more startups so he doesn't miss the rare big outlier.