David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

based in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

, who founded the

business accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, Cohort (educational group), cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public sales pitch, pitch event or demo day. While tradi ...

500 Startups 500 Global (previously 500 Startups) is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, California ...

(now 500 Global), serving as CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capital soon after, a new venture capital fund that will continue to work with companies he previously funded through 500 Startups.

Biography

McClure was born in

Morgantown, West Virginia Morgantown is a city in and the county seat of Monongalia County, West Virginia, Monongalia County, West Virginia, United States, situated along the Monongahela River. The largest city in North-Central West Virginia, Morgantown is best known as th ...

and grew up in

Columbia, Maryland Columbia is a census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland. It is one of the principal communities of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. It is a planned community consisting of 10 self-contained villages. Columbia began with ...

. He graduated from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science in

Mathematical Engineering Engineering mathematics is a branch of applied mathematics concerning mathematical methods and techniques that are typically used in engineering and industry. Along with fields like engineering physics and engineering geology, both of which may b ...

Technology startups

McClure founded Aslan Computing, a technology consultancy, in 1994, and sold the company to Servinet/Panurgy in 1998. He subsequently worked as a technology consultant to Microsoft, Intel and other high-tech companies. He was director of marketing at

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

from 2001 through 2004. He then launched and ran marketing for

Simply Hired Simply Hired is an employment website utilizing desktop and mobile application for an online recruitment advertising network based in Sunnyvale, California. The company was launched in 2003. In 2016, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. (owner of Inde ...

in 2005 and 2006. After leaving PayPal, McClure became a frequent investor in consumer Internet

startup companies A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

, investing in and advising more than 15 consumer internet startups, including virtual goods monetization and payments platform Jambool (acquired by Google in 2010) and US online education directory TeachStreet (acquired by Amazon in 2011). During the summer of 2009, McClure was acting investment director for

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

fbFund (a joint venture incubator/accelerator with prominent venture capital firms Founders Fund and Accel Partners), which provided early-stage capital to startups using Facebook Platform & Facebook Connect. In 2010, McClure founded

(now 500 Global), a

seed accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubators are often g ...

and related

investment fund An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages inc ...

. McClure gained attention both for his opinionated

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

''500 Hats'' (as of 2011 one of the ten most-read blogs on

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

finance), and as one of the so-called "Super Angel" investors involved in the

Angelgate Angelgate is a controversy surrounding allegations of price fixing and collusion among a group of ten angel investors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Emergence The issue The scandal began in September 2010 after Michael Arrington, editor of the Te ...

controversy.

Sexual Harassment Allegations

In 2017, McClure was identified in a

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

article, with

Sacca ''Sacca'' ( sa, Satya सत्य) is a Pali word meaning "real" or "true". In early Buddhist literature, ''sacca'' is often found in the context of the "Four Noble Truths",_a_crystallization_of_Buddhist_wisdom.__In_addition,_''sacca''_is_one_ ...

, about sexual harassment in venture capital. He was described as sending sexually inappropriate messages to a female investor, who later sought employment at his company. In response, he stepped down from day-to-day management in a post titled "I'm a Creep. I'm Sorry". He then denied the accusations and retracted his apology in another post that was then deleted. A few days later, McClure severed all ties, resigning as general partner as well. McClure then created a new venture capital fund, Practical Venture Capital, which aims to buy equity in companies he funded through 500 Startups.

References

External links

500hats
- investment blog
500 Startups
- official site for incubator {{DEFAULTSORT:McClure, Dave Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Johns Hopkins University alumni American businesspeople People from Morgantown, West Virginia People from Columbia, Maryland