Dave McClure

Who they are

Dave McClure is Founder and General Partner at Practical Venture Capital — previously co-founded 500 Startups in 2010 and hosts TradingPlaces, a podcast on VC secondaries.

Person

Dave graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1988 with a BS in Engineering and Applied Mathematics, then built a career that moved steadily from operator to investor. He started Aslan Computing in 1994 — a technology consultancy he sold to Servinet/Panurgy in 1998 — before landing at PayPal as Director of Marketing, then briefly at Founders Fund, Facebook's fbFund as Acting Investment Director, and Simply Hired as Head of Marketing. The through-line across those operator years: distribution and growth, not product or engineering. He co-founded 500 Startups in 2010, building it into a high-volume, data-driven seed accelerator and VC firm that backed over 1,500 early-stage companies — including Credit Karma, Twilio, and The RealReal — before departing in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capital in 2018/2019 and pivoted his focus to VC secondaries: buying fund interests in micro-VC funds and providing liquidity solutions for LPs and GPs. Possibly — he is also involved with Criticality, described as a $65M fund focused on founders solving complex, urgent problems. He writes on Medium and Substack about VC fund economics, secondary markets, and seed investing, and hosts the TradingPlaces podcast on VC secondaries — a very specific bet that liquidity in the micro-VC layer is the next structural problem to solve. He is also a visiting lecturer at Stanford on venture capital and a regular speaker globally (Istanbul, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Riyadh, Qatar).

Company

Practical Venture Capital, which McClure founded in 2018/2019, focuses specifically on VC secondary transactions — buying fund interests in micro-VC funds and creating liquidity solutions for LPs and GPs in early-stage VC funds. The firm's thesis is that the micro-VC segment is underserved by traditional secondary buyers, who prefer larger, more liquid fund interests. McClure has been active on the podcast circuit discussing VC secondaries — appearing on the Trading Places VC Secondary Podcast and the 10X Capital Podcast — suggesting he is using content to build deal flow and LP awareness for the strategy. He also serves as a visiting lecturer at Stanford on venture capital, which reinforces his positioning as a practitioner-educator in the space.

Market

Practical Venture Capital operates in the VC secondary market, a segment that has grown as the backlog of illiquid positions in early-stage and micro-VC funds has expanded. The firm focuses on smaller fund interests that larger secondary buyers like Lexington Partners or Secondaries investors typically pass on, targeting a structural gap in liquidity for micro-VC LPs and GPs. The broader secondary market has attracted increasing institutional attention as primary VC timelines have lengthened.

Network

McClure has a long history of collaboration across the global startup circuit. His documented network includes David Zhou (Cup of Zhou), with whom he collaborated on a VC fund secondaries podcast, and Rui Ma, a 500 Startups collaborator from the Hong Kong and China startup scene. His Stanford lectureship and global speaking circuit — Istanbul, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Qatar, Honolulu — suggest a wide but loosely documented set of relationships across emerging-market VC.

David Zhou· Host, Cup of Zhou podcast (VC secondaries)
Rui Ma· 500 Startups collaborator, China/HK startup ecosystem

How they likely show up

Mixed tenure shape — short stints at PayPal, Founders Fund, Simply Hired, then seven years building 500 Startups — suggests he commits deeply when he owns the thing, but moves fast when he doesn't.
Founded Aslan Computing, 500 Startups, Practical Venture Capital, and 42Geeks alongside hosting TradingPlaces → high agency, serially starts things rather than waiting for permission.
Active on Medium, Substack, and podcasts on VC secondaries → comfortable using public content as a business development tool, not just thought leadership.
Visiting lecturer at Stanford and global conference speaker (Istanbul, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Qatar) → accustomed to holding a room; likely prefers conversations that go somewhere, not small talk.
Career arc from engineer to marketer to investor → thinks in distribution and funnel logic, not just thesis or pattern-matching.
Hybrid role type (operator + investor) across career → probably gets impatient with pure-theory conversations; wants to talk about mechanics and deal structures.

Conversation tips

→ Reference TradingPlaces or his Substack on VC secondaries specifically — he's built content infrastructure around this thesis and will know if you've actually read it.
→ Ask about the micro-VC liquidity gap from a structural angle, not just as an asset class — he frames Practical VC as solving a specific market failure, not just doing secondaries.
→ His 500 Startups arc is well-known; skip the origin story and ask what the data-driven seed model taught him that informs how he thinks about secondary pricing today.
→ He has spoken in Istanbul, Hong Kong, Riyadh, and Qatar — if you have a connection to emerging-market VC, lead with it; it's clearly a recurring interest.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on TradingPlaces, his VC secondary podcast — he built a content property specifically around the micro-VC liquidity thesis, which signals this is more than an investment strategy; it's a platform.
Reference his 2010 co-founding of 500 Startups and the pivot to secondaries at Practical VC — the contrast between high-volume seed deployment and the illiquid cleanup that follows is the through-line of his entire post-500 career.
Mention his visiting lectureship at Stanford on venture capital — he has positioned himself as a practitioner-educator, and opening there signals you know he's doing more than just investing.

Discovery questions

What does the pricing model for micro-VC fund secondaries actually look like — how do you value a fund interest when the underlying marks are often stale or optimistic?
Running 500 Startups gave you a massive dataset on early-stage outcomes — how much of that informs how you underwrite secondary positions in similar-vintage micro-VC funds today?
You've spoken on venture in Istanbul, Hong Kong, Riyadh, and Qatar — are you seeing LP interest in VC secondaries come more from emerging-market LPs looking for liquidity, or from Western LPs over-allocated to early-stage?

Avoid

Don't rehash the 500 Startups departure — he has moved on publicly and built a new firm; centering the conversation there signals you haven't done the current homework.

Make it yours