Tom Shipley

DealCon host · AVA · DTC growth equity

Tom Shipley is the founder and host of DealCon, a mergers-and-acquisitions conference where the energy is palpable. He also co-founded AVA, the Agency Ventures Aggregator. For Dennis, the distinction between the event and the person is important; while the DealCon page covers the conference, this card honors Tom as a builder and a collaborator. Tom is part of the first sixty names on Dennis’s People & pets list, a ranking system used to select the initial set of individuals featured in this directory.

The relationship between Dennis and Tom is defined by a shared commitment to proof over hype. During a conversation about Eventapalooza, Dennis recalled a specific moment at DealCon where Tom provided him with the attendee list before a keynote. Instead of delivering a generic talk, Dennis used that data to score every person in the room based on their strengths, online reputation, and the gap between what they claimed to do and what was credible. One attendee, an air conditioner repairman looking to buy ten more HVAC companies, received a tailored list of acquisition targets matching his profile. The reaction was immediate and stunned; jaws hit the floor because the advice was so specific and grounded in reality. That principle—fame fills a room once, but proof fills it every year—drives the way Dennis and Tom approach their work together.

Dennis maintains a habit of taking pictures with the people he builds with so he can remember them. This page serves as the public version of that habit. The photographs are stored in a named Google Photos cluster, and Dennis plans to return to narrate the frames, adding context to the images that capture these collaborations. Until then, the visual record remains a placeholder for the stories yet to be told.

Find them online:

Photos with Tom Shipley

This page is part of how Dennis Yu honors the people he builds with — real pages that link real work, so the people he believes in rank on their own names. Meet the rest →