Dave McClure On Indian Internet, E-commerce & Start-ups

Dave McClure, a venture capitalist and the founding General Partner at 500 Startups (an Internet seed fund and start-up accelerator programme in Mountain View, California), was recently in India as part of his GOAP (Geek on a Plane) tour. The start-up investor, with extensive experience of funding around 200 start-ups, was here to gather on-the-ground understanding of entrepreneurship, investment prospects, themes and other relevant aspects. McClure has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over 20 years now, and has worked with companies like PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O'Reilly Media, Intel and Microsoft.

According to him, the market has developed a lot in the past five years and an entrepreneur now pays less than before to set up a new company. His investing experience in India is also decent. In his personal capacity, he has invested in companies like SlideShare (a leading community for sharing presentations), Mygola (a Bangalore-based company offering a Q&A-based travel platform) and Shareholic (a Boston-based company with development centre in Bangalore).

The Valley geek feels that a reasonably fat, piped business can be easily built with less expense in any part of India. However, entrepreneurs should focus more on making their core employees rich and should make it a part of their organisational culture. Citing his own example, McClure said that he owned a million when he transitioned out of PayPal, which really helped him in his investing business. PayPal is a global leader in online payment solutions and McClure was part of the founding team.

In an exclusive interview with VCCircle, McClure shares his views on Indian e-commerce, his reason to visit the country and his India plans. Watch the interview for more.

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