Dave Whorton

 Dave Whorton is the founder and managing partner of Tugboat Ventures, a seed and early stage venture fund focused on serving committed, passionate entrepreneurs with big ideas in consumer internet, mobile, cloud computing, security and SAAS. Tugboat’s team and network strive to make a significant difference from as early as inception through successful IPO or sale.

After earning a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford´s Graduate School of Business, Whorton found his way to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Texas Pacific Group Ventures, where he developed and incubated numerous investments.

Whorton has been called a "serial entrepreneur." He was founding CEO of Good Technology, co-founder of Drugstore.com and general manager and president of Optical Engineering, Inc. Dave also worked at Netscape, Hewlett Packard and Bain.

He currently serves on the board of directors of Education Elements, FiveApes, Mamasource, RichRelevance and SavvyMoney. Prior investments that Dave led include Blue Nile (NILE), Cranium and SuccessFactors (SFSF). Dave also worked closely with Amazon, Autotrader, E.piphany, Google and Stella & Dot in their early days. Dave is a founding non-profit board member of CharterCities and Newschools Venture Fund.