Dave McClure is an entrepreneur and well-known Silicon Valley angel investor for the Founders Fund investment group. McClure is known primarily for his background in the technology industry as well as his enthusiasm in working with startups and social networking, and his affiliations certainly serve to support such reputation. A former programmer with both Microsoft and Intel, McClure has been a fixture in Silicon Valley for over 20 years, and once founded an internet and ecommerce consulting group. While it's nothing out of the ordinary to see an angel investor who possesses ample hands-on tech experience, McClure combines this with an equally impressive familiarity in working with startup companies - beginning with his own role as Director of Marketing with the one of the most successful startup firms of the past decade, PayPal - valuable experience that he continues to utilize in working with startups today. In fact, McClure's served as an investor or advisor to an average of 10 startups a year over the past five years, a pretty high rate of activity for any investor. So when McClure hooked up again with former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel at Founders to head up their seed stage investment program FF Angel, it was no surprise to see the partnership as an ideal match - in fact, one blogger for ReadWriteWeb applauded the move as a "blockbuster" due to McClure's relationship with engineers and his extensive technical background. And McClure has followed up admirably: since his arrival in late 2008, FFAngel had invested in 18 startups in just a year's time, with his star investment Twilio, a provider of cloud-based API for development of voice communication apps - having received a $3.7 million dollar Series A round of funding just a few months after bringing in McClure as an investor and board member. To his credit, McClure is also extremely active in social media, whether on his own Twitter and Facebook accounts or managing yet another program that has resulted in over 20 investments so far in Facebook-related startups. What really impresses about McClure is his raw enthusiasm for startups and investing - this is an individual who has been constantly organizing conferences, meetings, dinners and other engagements for startup entrepreneurs for years now and recent reports even have him launching his own venture fund, a move that TechCrunch sees as McClure transtitioning to a "more organized venture capitalist". Whether one prefers to see McClure as an angel, a VC, a social media enthusiast or just a guy who, in his words, has been "geeking out in Silicon Valley" for the past two decades, few can deny his relevance, involvement and insight as an experienced advisor and investor in tech startups.
Dave McClure is an entrepreneur and well-known Silicon Valley angel investor for the Founders Fund investment group. McClure is known primarily for his background in the technology industry as well as his enthusiasm in working with startups and social networking, and his affiliations certainly serve to support such reputation. A former programmer with both Microsoft and Intel, McClure has been a fixture in Silicon Valley for over 20 years, and once founded an internet and ecommerce consulting group. While it's nothing out of the ordinary to see an angel investor who possesses ample hands-on tech experience, McClure combines this with an equally impressive familiarity in working with startup companies - beginning with his own role as Director of Marketing with the one of the most successful startup firms of the past decade, PayPal - valuable experience that he continues to utilize in working with startups today. In fact, McClure's served as an investor or advisor to an average of 10 startups a year over the past five years, a pretty high rate of activity for any investor. So when McClure hooked up again with former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel at Founders to head up their seed stage investment program FF Angel, it was no surprise to see the partnership as an ideal match - in fact, one blogger for ReadWriteWeb applauded the move as a "blockbuster" due to McClure's relationship with engineers and his extensive technical background. And McClure has followed up admirably: since his arrival in late 2008, FFAngel had invested in 18 startups in just a year's time, with his star investment Twilio, a provider of cloud-based API for development of voice communication apps - having received a $3.7 million dollar Series A round of funding just a few months after bringing in McClure as an investor and board member. To his credit, McClure is also extremely active in social media, whether on his own Twitter and Facebook accounts or managing yet another program that has resulted in over 20 investments so far in Facebook-related startups. What really impresses about McClure is his raw enthusiasm for startups and investing - this is an individual who has been constantly organizing conferences, meetings, dinners and other engagements for startup entrepreneurs for years now and recent reports even have him launching his own venture fund, a move that TechCrunch sees as McClure transtitioning to a "more organized venture capitalist". Whether one prefers to see McClure as an angel, a VC, a social media enthusiast or just a guy who, in his words, has been "geeking out in Silicon Valley" for the past two decades, few can deny his relevance, involvement and insight as an experienced advisor and investor in tech startups.