Founding Partner

David Marquardt

 
Founding Partner

David Marquardt

 
Founding Partner

David Marquardt

 

Dave co-founded August Capital in 1995. Dave’s commitment to entrepreneurs and their market vision is reflected by his long-standing board relationships. He has served on more than 40 boards of directors over his long venture capital career commencing in 1979.

Dave has been involved in every phase of the entrepreneurial process from seed investments to classic venture financings, mergers & acquisitions, public offerings, and restructurings & privatizations.

Prior to founding August Capital, Dave co-founded Technology Venture Investors (TVI) in 1980 where he was involved in four highly successful funds that invested in over 100 start-up and emerging growth companies. Among these early investments was Microsoft, where TVI was the sole investor. Dave served on the Microsoft board of directors from 1981 until 2014.

Dave began his venture career at Institutional Venture Associates and prior to business school he was a design engineer and development manager at Diablo Systems (acquired by Xerox) where he collaborated on and led disk drive and printer programs.

Dave received a BSME (1973) from Columbia University and a MBA (1979) from Stanford University. He also completed coursework for an MSEE at Stanford while attending business school. He has served as president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and is a past director of the National Venture Capital Association.

Previous August investments: Alibre (acquired by 3D Systems), Be (acquired by Palm/HP), Bubbli (acquired by DropBox), Cobalt Networks (acquired by Sun Microsystems), eBates (acquired by Rakuten), eCash (acquired by InfoSpace),  Mimosa (acquired by Iron Mountain),NetPulse, Openlane (acquired by Adesa/KAR), Seagate Technology privatization (STX), Tumbleweed Communications (acquired by Axway), Xirrus (acquired by Riverbed) and Westbridge (acquired by Progress Software).

Other previous investments: Adaptec (NYSE:  ADPT), Archive (acquired by Seagate), Compaq (acquired by HP), Grand Junction Networks (acquired by Cisco), Linear Technology (Nasdaq: LLTC); Microsoft (MSFT), Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle) and Symantec (SYMC).

 
 

Select Exited Investments

Industry Sector: Software and Services

Headquartered: NA

Lead Investment Professional: Vivek Mehra and David Marquardt

Mimosa Systems (acquired by Iron Mountain): Mimosa Systems, Inc. provides content archiving solutions for information immediacy, discovery, and continuity. It offers Mimosa NearPoint, an integrated unstructured information management software for emails, files, and instant messages that enables email and file system archiving, e-discovery, recovery, disaster recovery, and storage management.

Industry Sector: Hardware

Headquartered: NA

Lead Investment Professional: David Marquardt

NetCell (exited): Creating Revolutionary Storage Processing Solutions That Are Accessible To Everyone Netcell® develops highly intelligent, plug-and-play storage solutions for the professional content creator, small-to-medium sized businesses as well as the consumer market. Users who adopt Netcell technology can increase their overall PC performance through application accelerators and plug ins, seamlessly grow their storage capacity, and most important, practically eliminate the chance of losing data from a malfunctioning disk drive — all with simple push button auto-configuration technology.

Industry Sector: Software and Services

Headquartered: San Francisco, CA

Lead Investment Professional: David Marquardt

NetPulse: FITNESS IS GOING MOBILE. Members aren’t just going to the gym to get fit— they’re downloading apps, they’re tracking everything with internet-connected gear, and it’s all in the cloud. Thousands of health clubs have launched custom-branded mobile apps by Netpulse, and the results are in: engaged members and increased club revenue.

Industry Sector: eCommerce

Headquartered: NA

Lead Investment Professional: David Marquardt

OPENLANE (acquired by KAR): OPENLANE, Inc. is a leading online auction company in North America for automotive dealers to buy and sell wholesale vehicles. The company offers end-to-end auto remarketing solutions to auto manufacturers, captive finance companies, lease and daily rental companies, financial institutions and wholesale auto auctions throughout the United States and Canada.

Industry Sector: Software and Systems

Headquartered: NA

Lead Investment Professional: David Marquardt

Westbridge (Actional acquired by Progress Software): In January 2006 Progress Software acquired Mountain View based Actional Corporation, which itself was the merger between Actional Corporation and WestBridge Technologies (an XML Security company). Progress focuses on providing enterprise-class SOA Management, Security, and run-time Governance solutions that cross vendor and protocol boundaries, based upon open standards.

Industry Sector: Hardware

Headquartered: Cupertino, CA

Lead Investment Professional: David Marquardt

Seagate Technology (STX): Founded in 1979, Seagate is a world leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions.

Industry Sector: Data Communications

Headquartered: NA

Lead Investment Professional: David Marquardt

SkyPilot Networks (acquired by Trilliant): SkyPilot’s leading-edge broadband wireless products offer a total solution for service providers and municipalities who are ready to deploy broadband services. From versatile, long-range wireless infrastructure to cost-effective CPE and management software, SkyPilot supports more applications over a common network to lower total cost of ownership and optimize revenue opportunities.

Industry Sector: Data Communications

Headquartered: Thousand Oaks, CA

Lead Investment Professional: David Marquardt

Xirrus (acquired by Riverbed): Xirrus delivers the industry’s broadest portfolio of Access Points and Modular Arrays to meet all of your wireless needs for indoor or outdoor uses. Right size your wireless network with choices from 2-radio APs up to 16 radio Array platforms with integrated controllers supporting 802.11a/b/g/n/ac technology on every radio. Deploy 50-75% less equipment to reduce the total cost of ownership of the network.