Dave McClure

Founding Partner @ 500 Startups

I’m a geek, investor, former coder & entrepreneur, occasional blogger and internet marketing nerd. I’ve lived in Silicon Valley for over 25 years and I’m passionate about startups & entrepreneurship. I’ve invested in hundreds of companies all over the world.

I’m the founding partner of 500 Startups (http://500.co), a global seed-stage VC fund & accelerator with ~$200M under management. We have invested in more than 1,000 companies across 50+ countries including: Credit Karma, GrabTaxi, Twilio, Udemy, Ipsy, TalkDesk, Intercom, MakerBot (acq’d by SSYS for $400M), Wildfire (acq’d by GOOG for $350M), and Viki (acq’d by Rakuten for $200M).

Previously, I managed early-stage investments for Founders Fund (2008-2010), and led the Facebook fbFund incubator (2009). After leaving PayPal in 2004, I was an investor/advisor in ~15 startups including Bix.com (acq’d by YHOO), Mint.com (acq’d by INTU), Jambool (acq’d by GOOG), TeachStreet (acq’d by AMZN), SlideShare (acq’d by LNKD), and Mashery (acq’d by INTC). Before PayPal, I founded Aslan Computing, acquired by Servinet in 1998.

500 Startups invests in technology companies building consumer and business internet services. Our headquarters are in Silicon Valley, however our team of 80+ people speaks 20+ languages and is all over the world, including the SF Bay Area, New York City, Mexico, Brazil, India, China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, UK, Germany, Turkey, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. In addition to investment, we help startups with product and marketing, customer development, design and usability, online distribution, business metrics, and fundraising.