Dave Smith
Investment Committee Member
Investment Committee Member
David M. Smith (Dave) is an entrepreneur, company advisor, angel investor and VC Limited Partner.
After 30+ years in entrepreneurial ventures and corporate management, Dave’s passion for new technologies has led him to invest time and treasure in companies with breakthrough potential to solve complex problems and transform their respective markets.
Dave has been in executive management with companies as large as Novell, and his specialty is driving winning go-to-market strategies that produce quantum growth in revenue, including direct sales and alliance/partner relationships. Dave’s background is primarily in SAAS and enterprise software, but his investment in biotech, medical devices and healthcare technologies stretches back to the 1990’s.
Having founded a successful consulting practice assisting early stage companies (in all industries) achieve a faster revenue trajectory, Dave’s company also specialized in commercializing significant technologies from major universities and DOE National Laboratories.
In addition to his own business, Dave was a founding member and COO of Unitech Systems (now Infogix), which focused on data quality and data governance for Global 2000 enterprises. He led the company through 40X growth over 15 years to acquisition by Private Equity in the early 2000’s.
A Chicago native, Dave has been a mentor/teacher in the entrepreneurial programs at both Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, is a past president of the MIT Enterprise Forum – Chicago, and was a Founder and President of The Big Idea Forum, a group of tech founders focused on mentoring the next generation of technology leaders.
Dave is a competitive triathlete and lives with his wife, Deborah, in Newport, RI.