David S. Rose

David S. Rose is an Associate Founder of Singularity University and its Founding Track Chair for Finance, Entrepreneurship and Economics. He is an Inc. 500 CEO, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and keynote speaker who has founded or funded over 100 pioneering companies. David has been described by Forbes as “New York’s Archangel”, by Crain’s New York Business as “the father of angel investing in New York”, and by Red Herring magazine as “patriarch of Silicon Alley”. He is the New York Times best-selling author of the standard text books for both startup founders and startup investors: “Angel Investing” and “The Startup Checklist”.

From his initial involvement with the first online communities in the 1970s, through founding one of the first personal computer training companies in the 1980s, one of the first wireless data information networks in the 1990s, the first global angel investing platform in the 2000s, and the first institutional real estate capital markets platform in the 2010s, David has been at the forefront of innovation in business and technology.

Among the fields in which he has been actively involved as an executive, board member or investor are: real estate, artificial intelligence, blockchain, wireless communications, consumer electronics, crowdsourcing, international finance, social networking, space tourism, user-generated content, mobile network security, electronic music, out-of-home advertising, fiber-optic networking, concierge medicine, and many others.

As an entrepreneurial executive himself, David is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Gust, the world’s largest online platform for entrepreneurs and early-stage investors, and Founder and CEO of the US Real Estate Market. He is also Founder and Chairman Emeritus of New York Angels; and the former chairman of JUMP Bikes (Uber); Comixology (Amazon); Pond5 (Accel); and Panjiva (S&P Global). He currently serves as Chairman of artificial intelligence platform Thinkable AI, and the hospitality blockchain platform BookitNGo.

David is well known in the business startup community for discovering and mentoring high-potential entrepreneurs and has been profiled by BusinessWeek as “The Pitch Coach”, with his classic TEDtalk on “How to Pitch a VC” having been viewed over a million times. He lectures at business schools including Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Cambridge, and was named Mentor of the Year by NYU’s Stern School of Business. Prior to founding AirMedia Corporation in 1988, for which he served as CEO for over ten years, his career included over fifteen years in real estate development, government, and urban planning. David was co-founder and Chairman of The Computer Classroom and Vice President at Rose Associates, Inc. Earlier, he served as Deputy Director of the New York office of US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

A native New Yorker, David has a BA in Urban Affairs from Yale University, an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and a D. Eng. (hc) from Stevens Institute of Technology. He is a graduate of the New York City public school system and Horace Mann High School, and is an Associate Fellow of Pierson College at Yale University.

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