Fireside chat: Dave McClure in conversation with Shradha Sharma

Dave McClure’s success with his accelerator has been nothing short of meteoric and today 500 Startups is synonymous with startups across the world. With investments in countries like Jordan and Croatia, Dave and his team at 500 Startups have worked hard to represent today’s global startup community. Dave and a group of ‘geeks’ were in Bangalore as part of the ‘Geeks on a Plane’ initiative -- an invite-only tour for startups, investors and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. The geeks comprised technologists from prominent startups from the Valley, like SendGrid to corporate executives from behemoths like Google. A TechCrunch journalist was also part of the contingent to get a first-hand experience of the energy in Bangalore.

Before setting up 500 Startups Dave was the director of marketing and sales at PayPal and then an investment director at Facebook’s fbFund. Dave is now Silicon Valley’s ‘super angel’ and is on a worldwide hunt to find the best startups and entrepreneurs. In front of a packed GINSERV auditorium, filled with entrepreneurs and technologists from Bangalore, YourStory.in founder Shradha Sharma engaged in a candid interview with Dave McClure on a number of issues riddling the startup ecosystem in India and the world over and how 500 Startups aims to bring the much required change in this space.

Dave held nothing back and brought the audience face-to-face with harsh realities of the current state of the ecosystem. He was very vocal about his opinions on sectors, investment philosophy and entrepreneurship. Watch the video to know more -