What do Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Page all have in common? Yes, they’ve founded multi-billion dollar businesses with virtually no formal business training, with combined revenues of over $80 billion. But they are also former software engineers and hackers, an experience that undoubtedly taught them skills in critical thinking and problem solving. Making … Continue reading “How to Think Like a Hacker, Even If You Can’t Code”
Author: David Teten
David Teten is a Partner with ff Venture Capital and Founder and Chairman of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York. ff VC has made over 180 investments in over 70 companies since 1999. HBS Alumni Angels of NY is the second-largest angel network in New York.
David led the first-ever study of best practices of venture capital and private equity funds in originating new deals and the first-ever study of VCs in creating portfolio company value. He has published in Harvard Business Review, Institutional Investor, the Journal of Private Equity, etc., and is the lead author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online.
David is a frequent keynote speaker to audiences such as technology entrepreneurs (MIT CIO Symposium; NY Software Industry Association; Software Information Industry Association); institutional investors (Kauffman Fellows; Franklin Templeton; Association for Corporate Growth); and senior executives (Vistage; CEO Trust). He has received the highest ratings of any speaker at three different conferences.
David is cofounder of the Venture Capital Access Program, which helps women and minority entrepreneurs raise venture capital from members of the HBS Angels network. He is a Mentor with Founder Institute in New York and Singapore, Dreamit Ventures, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Lean Startup Machine, and Startup Leadership Program.
He is Founder and Chairman of Navon Partners, a data analytics startup, and formerly Acting CEO of Vertical Key, a SaaS business for managing large-scale events. He was previously a Managing Director with Evalueserve, a 2,500-person global research and analytics company, and Founder and CEO of Circle of Experts, an investment research firm acquired by Evalueserve. David was formerly Founder and CEO of GoldNames, an Israel-based investment bank focusing on the internet domain name asset class. He worked with Bear Stearns’ Investment Banking division in their technology/defense mergers and acquisitions team, and was a strategy consultant with Mars & Co. David holds a Harvard MBA and a Yale BA, both with honors. While still in college, he started and ran a computer consulting group with over 35 clients.
He grew up in Marin County, Northern California, and learned to program on an Atari 800. He trains in parkour, a sport in which crossing the chasm is more than a metaphor. He speaks passable French and Hebrew but has completely lost the Portuguese he learned while working in Brazil.