Dave McClure
Founder & Managing Partner, Practical Venture Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutiveoperator@davemcclure ↗LinkedIn ↗practicalvc.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Dave McClure is the co-founder and former CEO of the global accelerator and seed fund 500 Startups, following earlier roles at PayPal and Founders Fund. He has backed breakout tech companies including Twilio and Credit Karma, and currently leads Practical Venture Capital.
Everything Dave McClure said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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…”
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 …”
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…”
Early rounds for Lyft, Credit Karma, and Twilio were uncompetitive
“When we invested in Lyft out of FB Fund, I guess it was called Zimride at the time, and when we invested in Credit Karma and Twilio they were not really that competitive rounds, even though, you know, the founders were compelling most of the time.”
Overemphasis on venture signaling indicates underlying company performance issues
“My perspective on this is typically that if the founder or other investors are more worried about my investment decision than the baseline performance of the company, there's already likely some kind of problem there.”
500 Startups has invested in over 100 Y Combinator companies
“We've been investors through our seed investment program in a bunch of YC companies, over a hundred. I think we're actually one of the top three or four investors in YC companies over the years.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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 …”
SlideShare and Mashery seed rounds were not competitive
“SlideShare and Mashree certainly were not, like, super competitive rounds although, you know, strong team and capable founders.”
McClure invested $25,000 into Mint.com's Series A round
“Mint.com, I guess, was probably a little bit competitive Certainly by the time the A round happened, I put about 25 K into the A round, but I'd already been, you know, helping the company here and there a little bit.”
500 Startups accelerator terms include a $500K follow-on option
“With our accelerator companies, we have a kind of fixed structure that we invest into and we ask for a 500 K option to invest in the follow on round where we don't exceed 20% of the round.”
The other half of the tape: Dave McClure's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 42 times in 13 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 22Matt Lerner 10Marvin Liao 4Parker Thompson 2Jason Calacanis 2Philipp Moehring 1Mike Duboe 1
Statements about Dave McClure, by other people (2)
Calacanis: 500 Startups would be twice as successful doing half as many deals
“I think if they can maybe, I think they would be twice as successful if they did half as much. That would be my, that is my advice to Dave. Do half as many deals, but do them twice as well”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 42
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 →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Dave's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & Managing Partner, Practical Venture Capital | 1 | 14 | — | full record on 20VC → |