About us

Hi there,

We met at Wesleyan University 30 years ago (no, we still can't believe it), got married 25 years ago, and have created many things together, including our first publishing company a few years out of college, and our daughter Mia, who also graduated from Wesleyan (go class of 2026!).

Between us, we've launched several companies and even more career paths, and have gone through more reinventions than we can name.

One thing we've learned is that there are always reasons to wait and not do the thing. When we launched our publishing company, Natavi Guides, we had barely any money, no connections in publishing, and even less of an idea of what it would all involve.

We dared ourselves to go for it anyway. And it turned out to be one of the most fulfilling, exciting, challenging, and wonderful things we've ever done. (You can listen to our episode about it on the Dare Yourself podcast.)

And that's the biggest lesson we've learned: The doubt will never leave first. You have to dare yourself to begin even while it's talking.

Which is why we created Dare Yourself Ventures, to help you turn your doubts into dares and do the things that are pulling at you.

This is our most audacious project yet. AKA we're daring ourselves together with you.

Nataly came to the US as a refugee at 13 and spent the next three decades daring herself: five companies, tech CEO, 3x bestselling author, international keynote speaker, profiled in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

At 40, she burned out, and dared herself to reinvent her work and her life to be more true to who she is. She picked up a paintbrush for the first time and at 50, had her first show in Mexico City. (Avi is the best manager her Boston art studio could ask for.)

Today Nataly is an advisor to founders and leaders creating their next era. She wrote her first book, The Daring Female's Guide to Ecstatic Living, when she was 25. It only took her 25 years to fully live it.

Learn more about Nataly

Avi has been building things since he and Nataly started their first company a few years out of college.

Over the next 25 years he built at every size and stage: as part of a startup acquired by Yahoo!, as a leader during MediaMath's climb from $100 million to $700 million in revenue, and through leadership roles at Akamai and Amazon.

He loves to lead dynamic teams, build new things, and advise founders disrupting how things have always been done.

Avi is a recovering English major and writes a weekly movie blog at movieswithavi.com. He loves movies almost as much as ice cream and coffee.

Learn more about Avi