Dave McClure
10 statements across 2 episodes · 2 bullish · 5 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Jun 1, 2015 by Jason Calacanis · said 42 times in 13 episodes since 2015 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Dave McClure's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (22), Matt Lerner (10), Marvin Liao (4), Parker Thompson (2), Jason Calacanis (2), Philipp Moehring (1), Mike Duboe (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: AngelList's Naval Ravikant on The Secrets To Success At Seed, Why Micro VC Is The Return of Traditional Series A & Why We Will See The Unbundling Of Traditional VC Brands
- 20VC: Why Venture Is A Service Product? Why There Is No Such Thing As Product Market Fit & Why Startups Need To Be More Design Orientated with Ben Blumenfeld, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Designer Fund
- 20VC: Why Cheque Size & Follow On Decision-Making Does Not Matter, Why Intelligence Is Overrated & Why You Should Do Everything You Can To Make Other People Successful with Anthony Pompliano, Founding Partner @ Full Tilt Capital
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 12 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: What It Takes To Raise A VC Fund & Investing in First Time Fund Managers with Michael Kim @ Cendana Capital
- 20VC: AngelList's Parker Thompson on How He Evaluates Startup Founders & Why The Move To Series A Is Harder Than Ever?
- 20VC: Why Great VCs Know The Opportunity In Hardware, Physical Stores Will Not Disappear and The Importance of Consumer Brand with Josh Udashkin @ Raden
- 20VC: X.ai's Dennis Mortensen on Why There Is No Incumbency Advantage in Artificial Intelligence
- 20VC: Andy Rachleff, Founder @ Benchmark & Wealthfront on What Makes The Best CEO & Board Member & Why Ivy League Endowments Are The Best Managed Capital In The World
- 20 VC: Philipp Moehring, Head of AngelList Europe on Scaling Seed Stage Funding and Why 500 Is Not Your Traditional VC
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
2015 24 mentions in 3 episodes 8 per episode
- 20 VC 082: 500 Startups Week: Growth Hacking 101: How To 10x Your Conversion with Matt Lerner, Head of Distro Dojo London
- Jason Calacanis: The World's Greatest Angel Investor
- 20 VC 083: 500 Startups Week: New Funds, Startup Mentoring and Dave's Masterplan with Marvin Liao, Partner @ 500 Startups
- every mention in 2015, scene by scene →
Everything said about Dave McClure, oldest first
Jun 1, 2015 negative
Jun 1, 2015 negative
Aug 15, 2016
500 Startups targets 1% to 5% ownership in seed rounds
“The typical ownership that we hold in most of our seed round investments is probably between one to five percent. Maybe a little bit higher in some of the international geographies where valuations are lower. For Accelerator, it might start at around five to s…”
Aug 15, 2016 positive
Aug 15, 2016
McClure turned $300K across 13 angel deals into three $100M+ exits
“Started doing angel investing as I was leaving PayPal in 2004, kind of doing that part-time recreationally, I guess, but invested in about, I guess, about 13 companies over the next four years, put about 300,000, maybe total, and got a few wins out of that, I …”
Aug 15, 2016 bearish
Venture math should focus on probability distributions, not ownership percentages
“But the point that I was making with Michael is that ownership really isn't the math that we use to kind of think about how we invest. We really think more in terms of number of investments and the likely probability distribution of finding large outcomes. And…”
Aug 15, 2016 negative
Sam Altman's advice to wait for YC is selfish and poor
“I think that's kind of laughable and actually probably really poor advice for entrepreneurs. Usually I think Sam and YC in general is an amazing program, and they offer lots of benefits and advice. In this particular case, I think they were being a little bit …”
Aug 15, 2016 negative
McClure passed on investing in Uber multiple times, starting at seed
“Clearly Uber was the deal that I totally fucked up. Travis gave me the opportunity to invest in June of... The reality is I didn't invest multiple times, not just in the seed realm, so it's probably my mistake multiple times over.”
Aug 15, 2016 positive
McClure's angel portfolio returned 3x without any unicorn exits
“So in my angel investment portfolio, I made about 13 investments. I did some advisory work for a few other companies, but let's say it's maybe 15 companies. There were no unicorns in that group of companies, but I had three What we would call centaurs or a hun…”
Aug 15, 2016
Predictably hitting unicorns requires investing in 200 to 500 startups
“If we find, you know, unicorn only two percent of the time, or heaven forbid, one percent of the time, our portfolio size needs to be a minimum of 50 to a hundred to really have a shot at that, and I would argue, actually, we are aiming for more than one unico…”