Santiago Pliego invests like a merchant-era explorer rather than a desk-bound VC, meeting founders out in mountains, deserts, and jungles, and judging them by whether they'd have led armies or conquered cities a thousand years ago. He looks for hidden bottlenecks in physical industries like mining, often backs founders off a short memo instead of a polished pitch deck, and built this approach first as an angel investor before turning it into Vashon.

• Highly focused on industrial technology, manufacturing, and aerospace. Frequently promotes national efforts to revitalize physical industries and hosts related tech summits in Detroit. As an example, recently leveraged a personal network to find an aerodynamics director capable of designing turbine stages for gas turbines, showing a strong preference for founders tackling rigorous hardware challenges.
• Captivated by the concept of building alongside close friends and leveraging tight networks. Strongly believes that founding a company with trusted peers creates an unmatched working dynamic rooted in camaraderie. A good example is a recent observation that massive civilizational shifts are often organized informally within obscure group chats, leading to a core philosophy of always backing friends with early investments.
• Motivated by the creation of high quality physical goods. Regularly encourages people to simply start crafting and manufacturing tangible items from scratch rather than getting bogged down in abstract ideas. For instance, recently showcased a beautifully crafted jacket bought early from a creator, praising the legitimacy and care put into the final physical product.