Dave has been an engineer, entrepreneur and investor in Silicon Valley for 30 years. He founded Practical Venture Capital and 500 Startups, and worked at Founders Fund and PayPal. He has invested in hundreds of startups around the world, including 30+ unicorns and 10+ IPOs. Forbes Midas List named him one of the top 100 global VCs in 2016 and 2017. He has a BS in Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University.
[Practical Venture Capital]
In 2019 Dave founded Practical Venture Capital, a VC secondary firm that provides liquidity solutions for LPs and GPs in early-stage VC funds. They specialize in buying fund interests in microVC funds at years 5-10 (“skip the J-curve”), as well as direct secondary in breakout companies within those portfolios. Their investors include senior execs at Facebook, Credit Karma, and Lyft, several Silicon Valley VCs, and experienced PE investors.
[500 Startups]
In 2010 Dave founded 500 Startups, a Silicon Valley VC firm now with over $1B AUM that has invested in 2,500 companies and 5,000 founders across 75 countries. Their investments include 40+ unicorns and 10+ IPOs: Credit Karma (acq INTU $8B), TWLO (IPO 2016), SEND (IPO 2017), REAL (IPO 2019), FLYW (IPO 2021), BARK (IPO 2021), GRAB (IPO 2021), GTLB (IPO 2021), UDMY (IPO 2021), TalkDesk, Lucid, Intercom, Canva, Ipsy, Iterable, Innovacer, FabFitFun, Algolia, Shippo, Solana, Carbon Health. They created 20 VC funds under the 500 brand, and invested in 20 other VC funds globally.
[Founders Fund, Facebook fbFund]
From 2008-10 Dave was a VC at Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Sean Parker. He made seed-stage investments in 42 companies resulting in 5 unicorns / 4 IPOs (TWLO, SEND, LYFT, Credit Karma, Life 360), and he led the seed round in Credit Karma (acq INTU, >400X return). The $3M portfolio he managed returned $200M (>60X) in 10 years.
[PayPal, Aslan, Johns Hopkins]
In 2001 Dave joined PayPal as Director of Marketing. Before PayPal he was founder/CEO of Aslan Computing (acq by Servinet, 1998). He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1988 with a BS in engineering and applied mathematics, and played lots of ultimate frisbee with other engineers and CS nerds.
You can learn more about Dave at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemcclure/
