David Teten

David Teten is a Partner with Orange Collective, a fund backed by 150+ Y Combinator alumni investing in the next generation of Y Combinator founders. He is cofounder and Chair of Action Tank, which uses AI to empower advocacy groups and other nonprofits to better accomplish their mission. David is also Chair of AltsTech, a community of investors in alternatives using AI, technology and analytics to generate alpha, and Founders’ Next Move, for tech founders exploring new ideas. He started his career as a strategy consultant, Bear Stearns investment banker, and serial founder with two cash exits as CEO.

David is a Venture Partner (formerly a Partner) with Coolwater Capital, which invests in emerging fund managers as a limited partner, into general partnerships, and into fund management companies. Coolwater runs an accelerator for emerging VC fund managers, which has graduated >300 VCs which have raised >$5B collectively. David was also formerly a Managing Partner with HOF Capital; Partner with ff Venture Capital; and Founder of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of NY. David has previously advised such institutional investors as Activate Venture Partners, Birch Hill Equity Partners, Goldman Sachs Special Situations Group, Icahn Enterprises, LLR Partners, Real Ventures, Right Side Capital, Tiferes.vc, Transform Investment Group, and Orascom TMT Investments (Sawiris family office). He has served on the boards of Ionic (sold to Twilio), Authorea (sold to Wiley), Earnest Research (Observer, sold to Consumer Edge), Signup.com, and Whisk (sold to Deem).

David was previously Managing Director with Evalueserve, a 2,500-person global research and analytics company; Founder and CEO of Circle of Experts, an investment research firm acquired by Evalueserve; and ran an outsourced software engineering/IT services firm. He has contributed original research on investing topics to Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, Harvard Businesss Review, PE Hub, Institutional Investor, Techcrunch, and VentureBeat. He started his career as a strategy consultant, Bear Stearns investment banker, and serial founder with 2 exits as CEO. He holds a Harvard MBA (Second Year Honors) and a Yale BA (Distinction in the major).