Dave McClure

Current

Founder/Creator at GeeksOnaPlane
Startup Investor (FF Angel Fund, fbFund Incubator) at Founders Fund
Organizer & Founder at Startup2Startup

Advisor, Angel Investor, Boardmember at TeachStreet.com
Advisor at Kiva.org
Co-Founder, Boardmember at Silicon Valley Microfinance Network
Startup Advisor / Consultant / Angel Investor at 500 Hats LLC

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Past

Investment Director (2009 Program) at fbFund Incubator
Board Member at Unitus
Advisor, Consultant, Angel Investor at Mint Software

Conference Chair, Web 2.0 Expo & Graphing Social Patterns at O'Reilly Media
Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University
Director Marketing, VP Marketing at Simply Hired
Director of Marketing, PayPal Developer Network at PayPal
Founder/CEO at Aslan Computing
Tech Proj. Mgr, Application developer, SQL DB developer at various; consulted for Microsoft, Intel, others

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6 more...

Education

The Johns Hopkins University

Recommended

62 people have recommended Dave

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Dave McClure’s Summary

I'm a geek, startup investor, former software developer and entrepreneur, tech blogger, marketing nerd, and overall fan of entrepreneurship. I've lived in Silicon Valley for 20 years, and loved every minute of it.

I run a seed-stage investment program for Founders Fund called FF Angel LLC, which makes $50K-250K investments in startups raising <$1M in capital. As of Q4/09, FF Angel has made investments in 16 startups (see below). I also ran the fbFund REV 2009 Incubator program which made over 20 micro-seed ($15K-75K) investments in Facebook and Facebook Connect-related startups.

Under the umbrella of my various hats and projects, I advise and invest in geeks and entrepreneurs who create new consumer and small business internet startups. In particular, I try to focus on helping startups improve their product development and marketing efforts, by emphasizing the collection and measurement of simple, actionable metrics to drive startup success.

more info:
- my blog: http://500hats.typepad.com
- my work: http://foundersfund.com
- my website: http://www.500hats.com (old UI, i know)
- my presentations: http://slideshare.net/dmc500hats
- my bio: http://tinyurl.com/6acpz7

my events:
- http://Startup2Startup.com
- http://Finance4Founders.com
- http://GeeksOnaPlane.com

Dave McClure’s 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.

Dave McClure’s Experience

Founder/Creator

GeeksOnaPlane

(Internet industry)

June 2009 — Present (7 months)

GeeksOnaPlane.com is a travel and cultural exchange program comprised of top Silicon Valley, US, and Int'l entrepreneurs, technologists, investors, and bloggers. We travel all over the world, visiting other geeks and entrepreneurs, learning/sharing about our collective experiences, and attending/hosting tech, startup, and social events and conferences. We help amazing geeks meet other amazing geeks, and have a great time.
Startup Investor (FF Angel Fund, fbFund Incubator)

Founders Fund

(Financial Services industry)

December 2008 — Present (1 year 1 month)

On behalf of Founders Fund, I run two early-stage investment programs: 1) FF Angel LLC, a seed-stage fund focused on $50K-250K investments in tech & internet startups seeking <$1M, and 2) fbFund REV Incubator, a $25K-100K micro-seed fund for Facebook-related apps & startups (note: fbFund is run jointly with Accel Ventures & Facebook). I also run several Founders Fund events and programs that support entrepreneur education in a variety of areas including: startup finance, product development, product marketing, and startup metrics.

misc FF Angel investments (see http://bit.ly/FFangel)
- Bit.ly
- CreditKarma
- Crowdflower (nee Dolores Labs)
- DailyBurn (nee Gyminee)
- FanBridge
- Fluther
- isocket
- Life360
- 1000 Markets
- Thread.com (nee Frintro / Sofa Labs)
- Twilio
- UserVoice

misc fbFund investments (see http://fbFund.com):
- FriendRadio.fm (nee DropPlay)
- Funji.me
- Gameyola
- GeckoGo / TravelBrain
- GroupCard / Cash.io
- Life360
- MyChurch
- Navify (nee ImageSurf)
- Networked Blogs (aka Ninua)
- NutshellMail
- Photos I Love
- PlanCast (aka Wordly Developments)
- RentMineOnline
- RunMyErrand
- RunThere
- Sociable (http://be-Sociable.com, nee Rondavu)
- Sortuv
- Thread.com (nee Frintro / Sofa Labs)
- Weardrobe (acquired by Like.com)
- Wildfire (http://WildFireApp.com)
- Workstir
- Zimride
Organizer & Founder

Startup2Startup

(Internet industry)

May 2008 — Present (1 year 8 months)

Startup2Startup is a group of Silicon Valley geeks, entrepreneurs, and investors dedicated to educating and helping the next generation of internet startups. We meet monthly over dinner to discuss relevant topics in technology and entrepreneurship, connect with new people and companies, and share our knowledge and experience.
Advisor, Angel Investor, Boardmember

TeachStreet.com

(Information Technology and Services industry)

June 2007 — Present (2 years 7 months)
Advisor

Kiva.org

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

May 2006 — Present (3 years 8 months)
Co-Founder, Boardmember

Silicon Valley Microfinance Network

(Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

September 2005 — Present (4 years 4 months)

I help run a microfinance non-profit (http://SVMN.net) focused on education & outreach in the SF bay area. I was a co-founder of the organization, and have served as both volunteer and boardmember since its inception. We created SVMN to connect and educate people about microfinance-related issues and topics, and host monthly events with notable microfinance industry speakers from the US and around the world. I created and oversee the SVMN website & related content, help recruit speakers & market our events, and work with the rest of the board to guide overall organization goals & objectives.
Startup Advisor / Consultant / Angel Investor

500 Hats LLC

(Internet industry)

August 1999 — Present (10 years 5 months)

I occasionally serve as an advisor, consultant, and/or investor to promising new startups. I prefer to work with internet startups involved in the areas of software, e-commerce, financial services, search, social networking, family / education, healthcare, and small business / consumer markets. I like to work with startups that are pre-seed, seed, or A-round, and range in size from 2-10 people.

For more info on the kind of companies I've worked with in the past, see: http://www.500hats.com/sys-tmpl/startupclients/

Companies for which i've been an investor or advisor include:
- Bix (acquired by Yahoo, 2006)
- Comercia (acquired by Microsoft, 2001)
- GigaOm
- KISSmetrics
- Life360
- Mashery
- Mint (acquired by Intuit, 2009)
- oDesk
- 750 Industries
- RichRelevance
- Simply Hired
- SlideShare
- Spock Networks
- TeachStreet
- Twilio
- WiseConnect (acquired by BayLogics, 2001)
Investment Director (2009 Program)

fbFund Incubator

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

April 2009 — September 2009 (6 months)

The fbFund REV Incubator program (http://fbFund.com) provides micro-seed (up to $100K) investments in early-stage startups developing solutions using Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. I coordinated the program for 2009, which ran from June thru August at the Facebook offices in Palo Alto. In addition to representing Founders Fund, i also work closely with Accel Partners and Facebook to help review, select, and invest in the best & brightest fbFund finalists.
Board Member

Unitus

(Non-Profit; International Trade and Development industry)

September 2005 — April 2009 (3 years 8 months)

Unitus (www.unitus.com) is a leading organization in the global microfinance industry. We select promising microfinance institutions ("MFIs") and provide long term investment (grants, debt and equity) and consulting, geared towards greatly accelerated growth, financial transformation and massive poverty alleviation.

As of October 2008, Unitus has established 22 partner MFIs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and reaches over 5 million microfinance borrowers worldwide.
Advisor, Consultant, Angel Investor

Mint Software

(Privately Held; Consumer Services industry)

November 2006 — October 2008 (2 years )

Advisor and consultant to consumer financial services startup on product & marketing. i helped the marketing team come up with a content strategy for blogging syndication, and contributed to the overall online marketing strategy via customer research & market positioning, channel strategies for customer acquisition, and search engine marketing. i also helped research web analytics and metrics tools for measuring user acquisition & engagement. i became an investor in Q2 2007.

Mint was acquired by Intuit in November 2009 for $170M.
Conference Chair, Web 2.0 Expo & Graphing Social Patterns

O'Reilly Media

(Privately Held; Publishing industry)

July 2006 — June 2008 (2 years )

Web 2.0 Expo (2006-2008)
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As a consultant to O'Reilly Media, I helped create & co-chair the first-ever Web 2.0 Expo tech conference (http:/web2expo.com). Along with Tim O'Reilly, John Battelle, and the staff of O'Reilly Media & CMP Media, I defined conference objectives, designed conference tracks & programs, recruited program committees & advisory board members, and reviewed over 500 submissions for conference talks. For the 2007 and 2008 conferences, I was solely responsible for designing 2 of the 7 conference education tracks on Marketing & Community and Strategy & Business Models, for which I selected & organized over 60 talks & panel sessions and recruited more than 150 notable industry speakers. I also helped promote & market the conference to the overall technology community, including tech press & bloggers, software developers, designers, entrepreneurs, marketers, venture capitalists, and tech executives, resulting in over 10,000 conference attendees.

Graphing Social Patterns (2007-2008)
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As a partner with O'Reilly Media, I was the co-founder and conference chairperson for Graphing Social Patterns, a business & technology conference about facebook, social networking platforms, and social applications. Along with O'Reilly Media, I produced 3 conferences in 2007 and 2008 attended by over 1,000 web developers, media & advertising executives, investors and press. For more info visit http://graphingsocial.com and http://gsp2007.com to see content & presentations from our events in 2007 & 2008 held in San Jose, San Diego, and Washington, DC.
Visiting Lecturer

Stanford University

(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

September 2007 — December 2007 (4 months)

In fall of 2007, I was a visiting lecturer at Stanford University and co-instructor along with Prof. BJ Fogg for CS377W, Creating Engaging Facebook Applications, the nation's first-ever university course on how to build viral & engaging web applications for Facebook Platform. The class also emphasized applying metrics to improve product development & product marketing. We brought in industry speakers from companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, & several venture-backed startups to provide real-world examples of internet technology & entrepreneurship in action. Collectively the class created over 50 Facebook applications resulting in over 20M installs and ~1M active users in December 2007. 5 of the 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. After the class was over, several apps were acquired by commercial entities, and one of the teams successfully raised venture financing.
Director Marketing, VP Marketing

Simply Hired

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

January 2005 — May 2006 (1 year 5 months)

Simply Hired (http://SimplyHired.com) operates the world's largest search engine for jobs, with millions of job listings indexed from thousands of job boards, classifieds, and company websites.

As Director of Marketing, I ran the Simply Hired marketing team before, during, and after launch of the company website in March 2005. Thru the end of 2005, I managed all aspects of marketing, PR, website content, search engine marketing, site metrics, community, and customer support. Along with our product team, I helped create the Simply Hired brand, voice, and overall site look and feel. I was personally responsible for strategic partnerships with LinkedIn and O'Reilly Media, and my team was responsible for the SimplyHired.com launch at Demo Fall 2005 and for the SimplyFired.com website and campaign that achieved national news coverage. I spoke on behalf of the company at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit conference, and 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 company's Series B round 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 has received awards from Time and BusinessWeek, and has been featured in national publications and websites including: NY Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, USA Today, Washington Post, San Jose Mercury, PC Magazine, TechCrunch, GigaOm, Business 2.0, and The Economist. As of October 2009 Simply Hired has raised over $22M in funding from both angel and institutional investors including Foundation Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, IDG Ventures, and News Corp.
Director of Marketing, PayPal Developer Network

PayPal

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; ebay; Internet industry)

September 2001 — October 2004 (3 years 2 months)

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 (including wizards for Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, FrontPage, Outlook), community message boards & forums, documentation, conferences, etc.

I also interacted closely with the PayPal Product and Marketing teams to help drive product strategy, marketing communication strategy, and provide regular customer feedback on current and requested functionality.
Founder/CEO

Aslan Computing

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

April 1994 — July 1999 (5 years 4 months)

Primary responsibilities involved business management, developing and managing marketing and sales efforts, recruiting and hiring technical staff, developing and managing strategic partnerships. Additional responsibilities included client account management, accounting and finance, general startup management. Aslan was acquired by Panurgy Corporation in January 1998.
• Founded, bootstrapped professional services startup from 0 to $2M in revenues in 3 years.
• Won “Microsoft Partner of the Year” award Northern California 1997, from pool of over 500 companies.
• Won business with key clients: Intel, Microsoft, Netscape, Stanford, The Gap, Intuit, VentureOne.
• Averaged 200% growth in annual revenues from ’95 to ’98.
• Recruited, interviewed, hired company employees; grew staff to 20 people.
• Arranged competitive company acquisition in ’98 from among 3 interested companies.
• Continued to grow business unit by 50% in the year after acquisition (also profitable).
Tech Proj. Mgr, Application developer, SQL DB developer

various; consulted for Microsoft, Intel, others

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

February 1988 — April 1994 (6 years 3 months)

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 and tuning, Windows networking.
• Developed real-time portfolio tracking system for Southern California money mgmt firm.
• Designed client-server application module for San Francisco food packaging company.
• Created mission-critical client-server application module for Microsoft on high-profile Intel project.
• Successfully managed worldwide Intel production system and database for 200+ users for 18 months.
• Supervised team of 4 Intel developers for new production releases and rollouts.

Dave McClure’s Education

The Johns Hopkins University

BS Engineering , Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Foosball , 1982 — 1988

Activities and Societies:

Captain of Ultimate Frisbee team, Member of Peabody-Hopkins Chorus, Member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

Additional Information

Dave McClure’s 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

Dave McClure’s Groups:

Founded, organized, and led Silicon Valley business and technical organizations that support local startups and entrepreneurs. Chaired monthly user groups and special interest groups (SIGs) on variety of technology & entrepreneurial issues such as Search, Venture Finance, E-Commerce, and the Internet. Developed meeting topics, recruited various CEOs, VPs, VCs, as speakers from leading technology & venture companies including Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Netscape, Intel, DFJ, Sequoia Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, numerous others.

• Founder/Chairperson, Silicon Valley Search SIG, 2005-2006.
• Executive Council, SDForum, 1996-2003.
• Founder/Chairperson, Venture Finance SIG, 2000-2001.
• Founder/Chairperson, Silicon Valley E-Commerce SIG, 1998-2000.
• Chairperson, Internet SIG, 1996-1997
• Chairperson, Client/Server SIG, 1995-1996
• Board member, Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE), 1997-2000
• President, SVASE, 1998-1999