San Francisco, California, United States
Dave is a veteran entrepreneur and leader, specializing in software product development and engineering. He has started and built 9 companies both venture-backed and bootstrapped, ranging from productivity systems, mobile apps, enterprise software, linux services, wireless, blog search, Generative AI, and digital health. He’s taken that experience and brought it into leadership positions at Interana, Lyft, and Reddit, where he combined his engineering management chops with user-centered product design to help create innovative products that have affected the lives of millions of users. In 2020, he took his experience to the Anti-Defamation League, where he led its Center for Technology and Society, both deeply engaging with and holding accountable tech companies to mitigate, ameliorate, and attenuate online hate and harassment. A results-driven executive, he believes deeply in building systems of trust and accountability to scale organizations. As an entrepreneur, Dave created Technorati, and served as CEO for the first 5 years of Technorati's lifetime, and then on its board until Technorati's successful sale. He was co-founder and CTO of Sputnik, where he directed the engineering of all Sputnik products, including its WiFi security and management products, the AP120 and Sputnik Central Control. Prior to that he was co-founder, CTO, and VP of Engineering at Linuxcare, Inc., where he built Linuxcare's services infrastructure, including its managed services business, a Linux-based, managed-server technology and service for xSPs. Dave is a regular speaker on leadership, user-centered product development, blogs, and the massive changes in the digital media environment. In 2007 and 2009, Dave was selected by the World Economic Forum to participate in its Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland as a WEF Technology Pioneer. He served on the founding board of Linux International and has served as an investor, advisor, and mentor to a number of companies, including Metavent, Causes, Mozilla, Xola.com, MeetingQ, and Merchant Atlas. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. Dave's hobbies include travel and astrophotography, and he speaks Japanese in a rusty kansai-ben. He lives in San Francisco, CA. Specialties: Generative AI, Product development, Building and scaling high-tech businesses, venture capital funding, technology due diligence, crafting product vision, consumer internet UX, building scalable service architectures, building and leading great teams, and getting the job done.
A smart CRM that processes every email from everyone who has ever communicated with you, summarizes every thread, and builds an always updated briefing on each person based on your relationship. You then run outreach campaigns using AI to pick just the right people at just the right time - and it even learns how to draft in your tone of voice by watching what you do and adapting to your tone and style. We just launched in public beta, and we are looking for partners who are eager to drive relationship-driven sales with $50k+ LTV. Early customers are seeing extraordinary results, with service ROI over 700%, and that’s running the service for only a few months. We are looking for beta customers who will give us feedback, learn with us, and grow with us as we continue to build. Let’s make happy customers and boatloads of money together.
• Collaborated with the CEO and team at Surmount to enhance engineering processes and infrastructure. • Assisted in strategic hiring initiatives to build a high-performing team during rapid growth. • Supported fundraising efforts, contributing to a successful capital raise that fueled company expansion.
CTO, VPE, and Design Thinking consulting practice, for companies including Causes, Mozilla Messaging, Xola, AddApp, Zagg Network, MyVillage, and Nurx. Advisor and investor for companies including Metavent, Maven Networks, Surmount.ai, Engajer, Merchant Atlas, Alynd, and Developeo. Assisted Causes on key engineering management decisions, and was acting VP of Engineering while Causes was undergoing explosive growth. Helped Mozilla Messaging build out sustainable revenue models, and worked with the executive team at Mozilla to evaluate the business and then roll Mozilla Messaging back into Mozilla Corporation. Worked with Xola's founder (Scott) and the team to help Xola refine their product vision and engage in customer development. Worked with them through the StartX program at Stanford as a mentor. Led MyVilliage's product development, design, and engineering, and helped implement an effective OKR process that was adopted by the team, resulting in improved results including closing its Series A venture round. Was responsible for all of Addapp's products and engineering. In particular leading the process of research, ideation, hypothesis generation, development, operation, and scaling of Addapp's products, business, and engineering organization.
ADL’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS) leads the global fight against online hate and harassment. CTS acts as a fierce advocate for making digital spaces safe, respectful and equitable for all people. Select results and achievements: * Envisioned and built the Online Hate Index (OHI), a set of machine learning-based classifiers that identify antisemitism and other forms of hate speech utilizing labelers from affected communities. This resulted in far higher accuracy than any other classifiers in the market, with Macro F1 scores above 0.85 and real-world performance 4-5 times more accurate than classifiers used by major social media platforms. * Envisioned and built ADL’s Social Pattern Library https://socialpatterns.adl.org/ a research-driven collection of design patterns and principles for mitigating the presence and spread of online hate and harassment in social platforms. * Led design advocacy and engagement with YouTube and Twitter that resulted in double-digit reductions in the amount of hate and harassment across the platforms, and engaged with Zoom’s product team to implement the Security Shield icon for hosts which reduced Zoombombing and improved millions of people’s experiences during the pandemic. * Testified before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Oct 28, 2021 on Social Media Platforms and the Amplification of Domestic Extremism & Other Harmful Content * Provided extensive advice on California’s AB587, a social media platform transparency bill, and testified before the California Senate Judiciary committee on Nov 9, 2021 on the State of Social Media Regulation: Misinformation, Exploitation, Harassment, and Radicalization * Implemented an impact-based measurement approach, and incorporated quarterly and yearly OKRs resulting in consistent overachievement of personal, team, and organizational goal metrics, and more than doubled the team’s size and budget as a result.
Responsible for leading Engineering, Product, and Design of Reddit's Revenue Generating Products including its core ad server and related products.