What makes 500 Startups’ Dave McClure a Super Angel – and why you should care

500 Startups‘ Founder and Partner Dave McClure is one of the most renowned angel investors in Silicon Valley. His name is often placed on an elite list that includes the likes of Chris Sacca, Keith Rabois and Peter Thiel. People call them the Super Angels: a hybrid between VCs and angels who invest big, and invest early.

In the 15 years before founding 500 Startups, Dave built and sold an early technology consultancy company, worked as Director of Marketing for PayPal, Acting Investment Director for Facebook’s fbFund and on the investment team Founders Fund.

Now, he travels the world looking for startups and providing advice for making it into the next 500 cohort. Advice like, “show me evidence that you’re not completely fucking stupid and that you’ve been able to execute on something.” And while this pearl of wisdom, recently dropped on stage, sounds like he hasn’t set the bar very high – his no-nonsense approach has meant he’s worked with some pretty awesome companies.

500 Startups has invested in more than 1,500 companies across 60+ countries, including: Credit Karma, Grab, Twilio (NYSE:TWLO), SendGrid, Udemy, Ipsy, TalkDesk, Intercom, MakerBot (acq SSYS for $400M), Wildfire Interactive (acq GOOG for $350M), and Viki (acq Rakuten for $200M).

If anyone can talk to you honestly about the ins and outs of VC financing, it’s Dave, which is why he’s one of Silicon Valley’s most sought after speakers.

See Dave McClure at TNW NYC

At TNW NYC on November 16th, Dave McClure will be joined by a meticulously selected group of world-class speakers, including Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Mattermark Co-founder and CEO Danielle Morrill, Slack Co-Founder and CTO Cal Henderson, and Buffer Co-founder and COO Leo Widrich.

There are some pretty good stories behind why we selected each of them – read them on our speaker page.