Dave McClure

I've been an engineer, entrepreneur and investor in Silicon Valley for 30 years. I founded Practical Venture Capital and 500 Startups, and worked at Founders Fund and PayPal. I’ve invested in hundreds of startups around the world, including 20 unicorns and 5 IPOs. Forbes Midas List named me one of the top 100 global VCs in 2016 and 2017. I have a BS in Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. I'm a nerd.

In 2019 I founded Practical Venture Capital, a VC secondary firm that provides liquidity solutions for LPs and GPs in early-stage VC funds. We 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. Our investors include senior execs at Facebook, Credit Karma, and Lyft, several Silicon Valley VCs, and experienced PE investors.

In 2010 I founded 500 Startups, a Silicon Valley VC firm with over $500M AUM that invested in 2,500 companies and 5,000 founders across 75 countries. Our investments include 20+ unicorns and IPOs: Credit Karma (acq INTU $7B), Twilio (IPO 2016), SendGrid (IPO 2017), The RealReal (IPO 2019), Life360 (IPO 2019), Flywire (IPO 2021), TalkDesk, Udemy, Lucid, Intercom, Canva, Ipsy, Barkbox, Iterable, Grab, Innovacer, FabFitFun, GitLab, Algolia, PlanGrid (acq ADSK $875M), Vungle (acq Blackstone $750M). We created 20 VC funds under the 500 brand, and invested in 20 other VC funds globally.

From 2008-10 I was a VC at Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Sean Parker. I made seed-stage investments in 40 companies resulting in 4 unicorns / 3 IPOs (TWLO, SEND, LYFT, Credit Karma), and I led the seed round in Credit Karma (acq INTU, >400X return). The $3M portfolio I managed returned $200M (>60X) in 10 years.

In 2001 I joined PayPal as Director of Marketing. Before PayPal I was founder/CEO of Aslan Computing (acq by Servinet, 1998). I 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.

I was born in Morgantown, WV and also grew up in Columbia, MD. I’m a fan of Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, Schoolhouse Rock, and Free to Be You & Me.