Dave McClure

Current

Investment Program Director at fbFund Incubator
Investor at Bit.ly
Investor at DailyBurn

Advisor at Life360
Startup Investor (FF Angel Fund, fbFund Incubator) at Founders Fund
Advisor, Investor at Twilio
Organizer & Founder at Startup2Startup
Advisor at 750 Industries
Advisor, Angel Investor at SlideShare
Advisor, Angel Investor at TradeVibes
Advisor, Angel Investor at EventVue
Advisor, Angel Investor at Oortle
Angel Investor at RichRelevance
Advisor, Angel Investor at KISSmetrics
Advisor, Angel Investor, Boardmember at TeachStreet.com
Advisor, Consultant, Angel Investor at Mint Software
Advisor, Angel Investor at Mashery
Advisor at Kiva.org
Co-Founder, Boardmember at Silicon Valley Microfinance Network
Advisor, Angel Investor at Simply Hired
Angel Investor at Canopy Financial
Startup Advisor / Angel Investor at 500 Hats LLC

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19 more...

Past

Board Member at Unitus
Advisor, LinkedIn Platform at LinkedIn
Startonomics Program Chair & Co-Founder at STARTonomics

Graphing Social Patterns Conference Chairperson at O'Reilly Media
Advisor, Consultant at Spock Networks
Web 2.0 Expo Conference Chair at O'Reilly Media
Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University
Advisor at Bix.com
Marketing Consultant at oDesk
Consultant, Product & Marketing at GigaOM
VP Evangelism Marketing at Simply Hired
Director of Marketing at Simply Hired
Director of Marketing, PayPal Developer Network at PayPal
Startup Consultant / Advisor at 500 Hats
Founder/CEO at Aslan Computing
Tech Proj. Mgr, Application developer, SQL DB developer at various; consulted for Microsoft, Intel, others

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13 more...

Education

The Johns Hopkins University

Recommended

57 people have recommended Dave

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

Dave McClure’s Summary

I'm a geek, former developer & entrepreneur, startup investor, 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 currently run a seed-stage investment program for Founders Fund called FF Angel, which makes $50K-250K investments in startups raising <$1M in capital. I also run the fbFund Incubator program which makes $25-100K investments in Facebook-related startups.

Overall, i advise & invest in geeks & entrepreneurs who create great new consumer and small business internet startups. In particular, i focus on helping startups improve their product development & marketing process, by emphasizing the use of simple, actionable metrics to drive startup success.

more info:
- my blog: http://500hats.typepad.com
- my company: http://foundersfund.com
- my website: http://www.500hats.com
- my presentations: http://slideshare.net/dmc500hats
- my bio: http://tinyurl.com/6acpz7
- my events: http://Startup2Startup.com http://GeeksOnaPlane.com

Dave McClure’s Specialties:

expertise: startups, metrics, entrepreneurship, product management, product marketing, internet marketing, blogs & web publishing, community evangelism.

professional interests: SEO/SEM, social networking & social media, Facebook, web analytics, viral marketing, prediction markets, geeky stuff.

personal interests: geeks, entrepreneurs, startups, microfinance, economics, music, ultimate frisbee, cartoons & animation.

Dave McClure’s Experience

Investment Program Director

fbFund Incubator

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

May 2009 — Present (3 months)

The fbFund Incubator program provides $50K-$100K investments in early-stage startups that are developing for the Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect. I am coordinating the program for 2009, which will run 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.
Investor

Bit.ly

(Internet industry)

April 2009 — Present (4 months)
Investor

DailyBurn

(Internet industry)

January 2009 — Present (7 months)
Advisor

Life360

(Internet industry)

January 2009 — Present (7 months)
Startup Investor (FF Angel Fund, fbFund Incubator)

Founders Fund

(Financial Services industry)

December 2008 — Present (8 months)

On behalf of Founders Fund, I run two early-stage investment programs: 1) FF Angel, a seed-stage fund focused on $50K-250K investments in tech & internet startups seeking <$1M, and 2) fbFund 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. I also make coffee & buy donuts :)
Advisor, Investor

Twilio

(Internet industry)

October 2008 — Present (10 months)
Organizer & Founder

Startup2Startup

(Internet industry)

May 2008 — Present (1 year 3 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

750 Industries

(Entertainment industry)

April 2008 — Present (1 year 4 months)
Advisor, Angel Investor

SlideShare

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

November 2007 — Present (1 year 9 months)
Advisor, Angel Investor

TradeVibes

(Internet industry)

October 2007 — Present (1 year 10 months)
Advisor, Angel Investor

EventVue

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

September 2007 — Present (1 year 11 months)
Advisor, Angel Investor

Oortle

(Internet industry)

September 2007 — Present (1 year 11 months)

Oortle also operates PhotoPhlow, a hosted application for browsing & sharing photography experiences, and VideoPhlow, a similar hosted application for viewing & sharing synchronized video, both using social network communities.
Angel Investor

RichRelevance

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

August 2007 — Present (2 years)
Advisor, Angel Investor

KISSmetrics

(Internet industry)

August 2007 — Present (2 years)
Advisor, Angel Investor, Boardmember

TeachStreet.com

(Information Technology and Services industry)

June 2007 — Present (2 years 2 months)
Advisor, Consultant, Angel Investor

Mint Software

(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)

November 2006 — Present (2 years 9 months)

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.
Advisor, Angel Investor

Mashery

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

June 2006 — Present (3 years 2 months)
Advisor

Kiva.org

(Non-Profit; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

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

Silicon Valley Microfinance Network

(Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

September 2005 — Present (3 years 11 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.
Advisor, Angel Investor

Simply Hired

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

August 2005 — Present (4 years)

While an employee at the company, I became an angel investor in Simply Hired in August 2005. After leaving full-time role in May 2006, continued as advisor to the company. Advisory role focuses on marketing & product areas, some technology infrastructure.
Angel Investor

Canopy Financial

(Financial Services industry)

January 2005 — Present (4 years 7 months)
Startup Advisor / Angel Investor

500 Hats LLC

(Internet industry)

July 2004 — Present (5 years 1 month)

From time to time, I serve as an advisor to promising new startups. Occasionally, I also provide angel investment to some of these companies. In general I prefer to work with internet startups involved in the areas of software, e-commerce, search, social networking, 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'm currently an investor or advisor include: Mint, SlideShare, KISSmetrics, TeachStreet, 750 Industries, EventVue, Oortle, Mill River Labs, RichRelevance, Spock, Canopy Financial, HealthUnity, Kiva.org (non-profit), Mashery, and Simply Hired.
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, LinkedIn Platform

LinkedIn

(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Internet industry)

June 2008 — November 2008 (6 months)

I helped advise LinkedIn on their application platform strategy & related issues around distribution, user engagement, and monetization (note: this was an informal & unpaid position, i was not employed directly by the company).
Startonomics Program Chair & Co-Founder

STARTonomics

(Information Technology and Services industry)

July 2008 — October 2008 (4 months)

I was the co-founder & program chair for Startonomics SF 2008 (http://startonomics.com/?id=1), a conference on how to create simple, actionable metrics for startup success. Our event was attended by over 300 of Silicon Valley's finest entrepreneurs, developers, designers, marketers, venture capitalists, & other startup fans. The conference was widely praised by attendees, and many people stated it was by far the best startup conference they had ever attended. The event was recorded & streamed live on uStream (video at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/startonomics-2008), and all conference presentations are available on SlideShare (slides at http://www.slideshare.net/Startonomics/slideshows). Startonomics SF 2008 was co-founded & jointly produced by 500 Hats LLC & Dealmaker Media.
Graphing Social Patterns Conference Chairperson

O'Reilly Media

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Publishing industry)

July 2007 — July 2008 (1 year 1 month)

I was the conference chairperson for Graphing Social Patterns, a business & technology conference about facebook, social networking platforms, and social applications. Visit http://graphingsocial.com & http://gsp2007.com for information on our events in 2007 & 2008 held in San Jose, San Diego, and Washington, DC.
Advisor, Consultant

Spock Networks

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

July 2006 — July 2008 (2 years 1 month)

Startup advisor to search engine startup developing people search. My advisory role focused on product & marketing areas, social networking and vertical search topics, and related technical infrastructure. I helped the founders research competitive technology offerings, develop initial product & feature ideas, brainstorm branding & identity concepts, and create marketing campaigns. I helped connect and introduce the company to notable tech analysts, reporters, & bloggers such as Michael Arrington, Charlene Li, Tim O'Reilly, and John Battelle. I worked with the marketing team to prepare for and participate in leading industry events such as Web 2.0 Expo and Supernova, where the company won top honors from among numerous other startups.
Web 2.0 Expo Conference Chair

O'Reilly Media

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Publishing industry)

July 2006 — April 2008 (1 year 10 months)

As a consultant to O'Reilly Media, I helped create & co-chair the first-ever Web 2.0 Expo technology conference (http://www.web2expo.com). Along with Tim O'Reilly & John Battelle and the staff of O'Reilly Media & CMP, I defined conference objectives, designed conference tracks & programs, recruited program committees & advisory board members, and reviewed over 500 submissions for conference talks. 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 30 talks & panel sessions and recruited more than 80 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. I also made coffee & donuts.
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.
Advisor

Bix.com

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

June 2006 — November 2006 (6 months)

Bix was acquired by Yahoo in November of 2006.
Marketing Consultant

oDesk

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

July 2006 — November 2006 (5 months)

Consulting role focused on product and marketing areas, primarily helping the company gain visibility with hi-tech audience & customers. Assisted with market research, brand development, product features & workflow, online advertising, marketing & PR, web-related events & conferences. Helped get articles about oDesk on TechCrunch, VentureBeat, O'Reilly Radar, other tech-focused blogs & websites. Helped coach and prepare for LaunchPad demo at O'Reilly Web 2.0 conference in November 2006.
Consultant, Product & Marketing

GigaOM

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry)

May 2006 — September 2006 (5 months)

I helped Om Malik & team with site [re-]design, planning, management & launch of an early multi-author / multi-channel version of the GigaOm website, as well as the initial GigaOm job board.
VP Evangelism Marketing

Simply Hired

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

December 2005 — May 2006 (6 months)

Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.com) operates the world's largest search engine for jobs, with over 5 million job listings indexed from thousands of job boards, classifieds, and company websites. SimplyHired.com was named one of the "Top 50 Cool Websites for 2005" by Time Magazine, and was chosen "Best of the Web" by Business Week in both 2005 and 2006. As of April 2005 Simply Hired has raised over $17M in funding from a number of angel and institutional investors including Garage Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, and News Corp.

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 and moving to an advisory role, I also ran the Product group for a short period and helped manage the company partnership with MySpace.
Director of Marketing

Simply Hired

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

January 2005 — December 2005 (1 year)

I ran the marketing team thru 2005, and managed all aspects of SimplyHired.com marketing, PR, website content, search engine marketing, site metrics, community, and customer support.

I helped create the Simply Hired brand, voice, and overall look & feel. I was personally responsible for 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 2005 Web 2.0 conference, and created the first-ever Vertical Search conference with speakers from over two-dozen search startups along with Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft.

In 2005 Simply Hired received awards from Time and BusinessWeek, and was 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.
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.
Startup Consultant / Advisor

500 Hats

(Internet industry)

August 1999 — August 2001 (2 years 1 month)

Provided product strategy consulting, product marketing, business development, and evaluation of early-stage Internet & E-commerce ventures. Assisted startups in defining and developing business strategy and revenue model, technical marketing and product management, research and development of strategic partnerships (particularly re: Microsoft). Assisted recruiting and organizational development.
• Served as advisor/consultant to 7 hi-tech startups; 4 secured venture financing, 3 acquired.
• Brought in key advisory board members to seed-round financial services startup.
• Developed strategic partner relationship with Microsoft Commerce group for eMarketing startup.
• Researched Microsoft Commerce, XML products for business development partnership.
• Interviewed, hired Product Marketing Manager for eMarketing startup.
• Appointed to Microsoft Commerce Partner Advisory Council, one of 50 members worldwide.
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 Websites:

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