David Daneshgar

David Charles Daneshgar was born on June 18, 1981, in Westlake Village, California. He developed an interest in poker while attending the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught a pass/not pass course on the Statistics and Probability of Gaming. This early academic involvement with poker foreshadowed his future career. After graduating, Daneshgar briefly worked in finance before deciding to pursue poker full-time during the height of the Poker Boom.

In 2006, Daneshgar was ranked the #5 player in the world by Card Player magazine, a testament to his skill and consistency. That year, he won major titles at the Borgata Winter Poker Open, the Bicycle Casino Winnin' o' the Green, and the Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic. His biggest live cash came at the 2008 World Series of Poker, where he won Event #37: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em, defeating a field of 2,693 entrants to capture his first WSOP bracelet and $625,443. Notable players he outlasted included Vanessa Rousso (44th - $10,660) and two-time bracelet winner Dan Heimiller (3rd - $275,695). As of 2025, Daneshgar's total live tournament earnings exceed $2,500,000 placing him 1,120th on the All Time Money List and 559th among United States players. He has also cashed in the 2024 WSOP Monster Stack and continues to play occasionally.

During the early 2000s, Daneshgar was a regular in private Los Angeles poker games. In a 2025 interview on the PokerNews Life Outside Poker podcast, he revealed that he was cheated in one such home game, an experience that taught him valuable lessons about trust and vigilance in both poker and business.

Despite his success at the tables, Daneshgar knew full-time poker wasn't his long-term path. After winning his bracelet, he met Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss during a poker event and asked if he could become the team's general manager. Buss declined but agreed to write a letter of recommendation, which helped Daneshgar gain admission to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

In 2010, while still in business school, Daneshgar co-founded BloomNation with Farbod Shoraka and Gregg Weisstein. The company is an online floral marketplace often described as "the Airbnb of flowers." To secure seed funding for the venture, Daneshgar played a two-day poker tournament at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, winning $27,205. He famously told his co-founders, "Don't worry, boys, it's flower time." That initial capital allowed the team to build a beta version of the website. BloomNation later raised $1.65 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Spark Capital, Chicago Ventures, and CrunchFund. By the time Daneshgar left BloomNation, the startup had raised $20–30 million in private funding and was featured in the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, generating billions in sales for florists.

In 2021, Daneshgar founded a second startup, Whippy AI, an artificial intelligence platform for sales and marketing automation. He continues to serve as its CEO. His experiences in poker—reading opponents, managing risk, and making decisions under uncertainty—have directly informed his approach to entrepreneurship.

Daneshgar has not fully left the poker world. He returned to the felt in 2024, cashing in the WSOP Monster Stack event. In March 2025, he was interviewed for the PokerNews Life Outside Poker podcast, recorded at the Venetian Poker Studio in Las Vegas. During the interview, he discussed his journey from poker pro to venture capitalist, the parallels between business and poker, and the role of AI in the game. He also recounted teaching a college poker class at UC Berkeley and shared a book recommendation for aspiring entrepreneurs. Daneshgar lives in Brentwood, California, and occasionally plays high-stakes games when time permits.

David Daneshgar's story is unique in the poker world: he leveraged his winnings not for continued gambling but as seed capital for a multimillion-dollar business. His success demonstrates that the skills honed at the poker table—bankroll management, statistical thinking, and emotional control—are transferable to the boardroom. Daneshgar remains an inspiration to players who see poker as a stepping stone to broader achievements, proving that a WSOP bracelet can be just one chapter in a larger career.