Geeks. Founders. Startups. The Internet Revolution, Act II.

Hi, this is Dave McClure:

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Dave McClure
Geeks, Entrepreneurs, Startups. The Internet Revolution.
Internet | San Francisco Bay Area, US

Summary

I'm a geek, startup investor, former software developer & entrepreneur, tech blogger, marketing nerd, and fan of tech entrepreneurship. I've lived in Silicon Valley for over 20 years and loved every minute. I'm the founding partner of 500 Startups (http://500.co), an Internet seed fund and startup incubator in Silicon Valley which has made investments in over 250 companies including Twilio, Wildfire Interactive, TaskRabbit, MakerBot, and Sendgrid.

Previously, I started and managed the FF Angel early-stage investment program for Founders Fund from 2008-2010, and also managed the Facebook fbFund incubator program in 2009. After leaving PayPal in 2004, I was an investor/advisor in ~15 startups including Bix.com (acqd by Yahoo in 2006), Mint.com (acqd by Intuit in 2009), Jambool (acqd by Google in 2010), TeachStreet (acqd by Amazon in 2011), and SlideShare (acqd by LinkedIn in 2012).

I spend most of my waking hours at 500 Startups, where we invest in companies creating new consumer & business internet services. We focus on helping our startups improve product and marketing efforts through customer development, an iterative approach, design & usability, online distribution platforms, and the collection and measurement of simple, actionable metrics.

more info:
- my bio: http://bit.ly/AboutDaveMcClure
- my blog: http://500hats.typepad.com
- my company: http://500.co
- my presentations: http://slideshare.net/dmc500hats
- my investor profile: http://angel.co/davemcclure

events & organizations:
- http://GeeksOnaPlane.com
- http://StartupVisa.com
- http://SMASHsummit.com
- http://WarmGun.com
- http://InboxLove.com
- http://MamaBearTech.com
- http://Startup2Startup.com
Specialties: expertise: startups, metrics, entrepreneurship, product management, product marketing, internet marketing, blogs & web publishing, community evangelism, venture capital. professional interests: SEO/SEM, social networking & social media, Facebook, Twitter, web analytics, viral marketing, prediction markets, geeky stuff. personal interests: geeks, entrepreneurs, startups, microfinance, economics, music, ultimate frisbee, cartoons & animation.

Experience

  • Apr 2010 - Present
    Founding Partner / 500 Startups
    I am the founding general partner of 500 Startups, an early-stage seed fund & incubator program focused on consumer/SMB internet & related infrastructure services. Selected areas of interest include financial services & e-commerce, search/social/mobile platforms, personal & business productivity, education & language, family & healthcare, web infrastructure, and tribbles. As of Feb 2012, 500 Startups has made investments in 256 companies, including Twilio, Wildfire Interactive, TaskRabbit, SendGrid, and MakerBot.
  • Dec 2008 - Present
    Investor (FF Angel Fund, Facebook fbFund) / Founders Fund
    On behalf of Founders Fund, I ran two early-stage investment programs: 1) FF Angel: a seed-stage fund focused on $50K-250K investments in tech & internet startups, and 2) Facebook fbFund incubator: a $25K-100K micro-seed fund for Facebook-related apps & startups (note: fbFund was run jointly with Accel Partners, Founders Fund, & Facebook). I made over 40 seed & incubation investments, several of which progressed to Series A/B investments, including Twilio, SendGrid, CrowdFlower, Bitly, CreditKarma, and UserVoice, among others. - list of FF Angel investments -- see http://bit.ly/FFangel - list of Facebook fbFund investments -- see http://fbFund.com
  • Apr 2009 - Present
    Investment Director (2009 Program) / Facebook fbFund
    The Facebook fbFund incubator program was a joint venture backed by Facebook, Founders Fund, and Accel Partners that provided early-stage capital to startups using Facebook Platform & Facebook Connect. I ran the 2009 program and led fbFund investments in Wildfire Interactive, TaskRabbit, ZimRide, Life360, & Sociable Labs, among others.
  • Nov 2006 - Present
    Advisor, Consultant, Angel Investor / Mint Software
    I was an investor, advisor, & marketing consultant to financial services startup Mint.com. I helped the marketing team with content syndication & blogging strategy, customer research & market positioning, channel strategies for customer acquisition, and search engine marketing. I researched web analytics and metrics tools for measuring user acquisition & engagement. I participated in the Series A financing led by Shasta Ventures in Q2/2007. The company was acquired by Intuit in November 2009 for $170M.
  • Aug 1999 - Present
    Startup Advisor, Investor / 500 Hats
    I was an investor, advisor, & consultant for internet startups focused on consumer and business services such as: financial services & e-commerce, personal & business productivity, search & social networking, web analytics & infrastructure. Notable investments/clients included: GigaOm, Mint.com (INTU), oDesk, Mashery, TeachStreet (AMZN), KissMetrics, Jambool (GOOG), Twilio, and SlideShare (LNKD).
  • Jul 2006 - Present
    Conference Organizer / O'Reilly Media
    Web 2.0 Expo (2006-2008): as a consultant to O'Reilly, I helped create & co-chair the Web 2.0 Expo tech conference. I defined conference objectives, designed conference tracks & programs, recruited program committees & advisory board members, and reviewed over 500 submissions for conference talks. I organized 60+ talks & panel sessions and recruited over 100 notable industry speakers. I helped promote & market the conference to the technology community, including press & bloggers, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, marketers, VCs, and tech execs, resulting in over 10,000 attendees. Graphing Social Patterns (2007-2008): As a partner with O'Reilly Media, I was the co-founder and conference chairperson for a business & technology conference about facebook, social networking platforms, and social applications. I produced 3 conferences in 2007 and 2008 attended by over 1,000 web developers, media & advertising execs, investors and press.
  • Sept 2007 - Present
    Visiting Lecturer / Stanford University
    I was a visiting lecturer at Stanford University and co-instructor with Prof. BJ Fogg for CS377W, Creating Engaging Facebook Applications, the nation's first-ever course on building web applications for Facebook Platform. The class emphasized teaching entrepreneurs how to use business metrics to improve product development & marketing. We invited industry speakers from Facebook, Google, Yahoo, & several VC-backed startups to provide real-world examples of technology & entrepreneurship in action. Collectively the class created over 50 Facebook apps resulting in over 20M installs and ~1M active users in December 2007. Five teams in the class created apps which generated more than 1M installs and were among the top 100 Facebook apps as measured by installs and active users. Several apps were later acquired by commercial entities, and one team successfully raised venture financing.
  • Jan 2005 - Present
    Director Marketing, VP Marketing / Simply Hired
    I led the marketing team responsible for launch, PR, website content, search engine marketing, site metrics, community, and customer support. Along with the product team, I helped create the Simply Hired brand, voice, and overall site look and feel. I was responsible for strategic partnerships with LinkedIn and O'Reilly Media, and our SimplyFired satirical website & campaign attracted national news coverage. I created the first-ever conference on vertical search with speakers from over two-dozen search startups along with Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. I was also an investor in the Series B financing in August 2005. In December of 2005 I was promoted from Director to VP, and continued to handle outbound marketing & evangelism functions for the company. Prior to leaving my full-time position with the company in 2006 and moving to an advisory role, I also ran the Product group for a short period and helped manage the company partnership with MySpace. Simply Hired received awards from Time and BusinessWeek, and was featured in national publications including: NY Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, USA Today, Washington Post, San Jose Mercury, PC Magazine, TechCrunch, GigaOm, Business 2.0, and The Economist.
  • Sept 2001 - Present
    Director Marketing, PayPal Developer Network / PayPal
    I started and managed the PayPal Developer Network, a community of ~300,000 web designers and developers who use PayPal to build E-Commerce websites, solutions, and services. I managed a team of technical evangelists to help deliver technical education & marketing, create site content, build PayPal add-on solutions for various web development and productivity tools, community message boards & forums, documentation, and conferences. I also interacted closely with the Product and Marketing teams to help drive product strategy, marketing communication strategy, and provide regular customer feedback on current and requested functionality.
  • Apr 1994 - Present
    Founder/CEO / Aslan Computing
    I founded and bootstrapped an internet & ecommerce professional services startup to $2M revenue in 3 years. Aslan was acquired by Servinet/Panurgy in January 1998. • Grew team from 1 to 20 employees. • Won “Microsoft Partner of the Year” award Northern California 1997. • Key Clients: Intel, Microsoft, Netscape, Stanford, Intuit, VentureOne. • Averaged 200% growth in annual revenues from ’95 to ’98. • Grew business unit by 50% in year after acquisition (profitable).
  • Feb 1988 - Present
    Developer / Proj Mgr / consultant for Intel, MSFT, others
    Designed, developed, deployed client/server information systems and SQL DB systems for corporate clients in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Worked with Microsoft & Intel for two years developing and managing mission-critical capacity planning and scheduling system for Intel worldwide production and manufacturing. Managed technical projects and teams, deployed systems, provided maintenance & support, systems training. Technical skills included application development, SQL database development, database admin & tuning.

Education

  • 1982 - 1988
    The Johns Hopkins University
    BS Engineering in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Foosball
    Activities: Captain of Ultimate Frisbee team, Member of Peabody-Hopkins Chorus, Member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

Additional Information

Websites:
Honors:
Loudmouth & Idiot (US National Champion, 2008-present)
Interests:
Finance and economics, ultimate frisbee, entrepreneurship and venture capital, jazz and classical music, politics and business, sports and games of all kinds, cartoons and animation
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