Dave McClure
VCFounder & Managing Partner, Practical Venture Capital
VC secondaries specialist and 500 Startups founder
Background
Dave McClure co-founded 500 Startups in 2010, building it into a global accelerator and venture fund with over 1,500 investments and 30+ unicorns, including Twilio, Intercom, and SendGrid. He resigned as CEO of 500 Startups in July 2017 following sexual misconduct allegations. In 2019, he founded Practical Venture Capital, a Silicon Valley firm focused on VC secondary markets — specifically buying fund interests in micro-VC funds at years 5–10 and direct secondaries in breakout companies within those portfolios. Prior to 500 Startups, he held marketing roles at PayPal pre-IPO and served as acting investment director for Facebook's fbFund.
Investment Thesis
High-volume global seed strategy ('lots of little bets') across fintech, SaaS, consumer, and developer tools; currently specializes in VC secondary markets via Practical Venture Capital.
Investment Focus
Stages
Sectors
Based in: USA (global via secondaries) (North America)
Notable Investments
Twilio
Via 500 Startups; cloud communications IPO 2016
Intercom
Via 500 Startups; customer messaging platform
SendGrid
Via 500 Startups; acquired by Twilio for $3B
Credit Karma
Led seed round 2009; acquired by Intuit for $7B (~400x return)
Udemy
Via 500 Startups; online learning marketplace IPO
Grab
Via 500 Startups; Southeast Asia super-app
Canva
Via 500 Startups; design platform unicorn
SlideShare
Early angel; acquired by LinkedIn for ~$119M