I’m Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups. Ask me anything!

Hi TIA Community!

My name is Dave McClure, and I’m the founding partner of 500 Startups, a global venture capital fund. We have invested in more than a thousand startups all over the world. We usually invest ~$100,000 USD in early-stage companies that have built a functional product and have users or customers along with some revenue.

Here are some trivia about me:

• I was born in West Virginia, grew up on the east coast, graduated from Johns Hopkins University with an engineering degree in applied mathematics. However, I wasn’t that great a student and probably spent more time playing frisbee than I did studying.
• After graduating, I came out to California in 1989 to join many other geeks in Silicon Valley, and started out as a programmer and database developer. I started a small tech consulting company in 1994 that built websites, internet, intranet & e-commerce systems, and was later acquired in 1998 for a small sum. I made a lot of mistakes as a first-time founder, but I guess I learned a lot about how to start and grow a company.
• In 2001, I had the good fortune to join PayPal and got to work with a bunch of amazing people who went on to start other companies like LinkedIn, Yelp, YouTube, Yammer, and many more. It was a really great environment, and again I learned a lot about running and working at a startup.
• After PayPal, I started doing some angel investing in 2004 and was fortunate to invest in companies like SlideShare, Mashery, Simply Hired, TeachStreet, and Mint.com. I had fun helping some of the companies as either an advisor or part-time employee, and I ended up making a little money.
• After a few years as an angel investor, I joined Founders Fund in 2008 and had the good fortune to work with Sean Parker and Peter Thiel, and made several successful investments in companies such as Twilio, Credit Karma, Wildfire Interactive, SendGrid, and Lyft, among others. I also got to run the Facebook fbFund and incubator in 2009.
• In 2010, I founded 500 Startups along with my co-founder and partner Christine Tsai, a former Google alumni. The rest of the journey since then has been a crazy and wonderful adventure, and I wouldn’t change any of it — it’s been a blast 🙂

Looking forward to some fun and challenging questions! Ask me anything!

Note from Daniel, TIA’s community manager:
The host may choose at his preference to not answer particular questions. The AMA is moderated by the community managers, so let’s keep the questions friendly. 🙂