David William Baum

David Baum is an experienced general partner with 25 years in the information technology industry, including fifteen years in technology finance and ten years in entrepreneurial operating management roles.

As an operating entrepreneur, David founded two companies including Pensoft Corporation, a venture-backed (Mohr, Davidow Ventures, IVP, and Bay Partners) mobile communications company that was sold to AT&T in 1994. David has also spent time at larger organizations including IBM and Genentech.

David was a key principal that raised, launched, staffed, and managed Prism Venture Partners, a leading early stage venture capital fund. Founded in 1996, Prism has provided start-up equity to more than eighty-five companies, which have completed five public offerings and thirty strategic mergers and acquisitions. During his tenure at Prism, the firm grew from zero to over $1.25B under management. Previous investments include Softricity (sold to Microsoft), Network24 Communications (sold to Akamai), DotBank (sold to Yahoo), Altaworks (sold to Opnet), Integral Access (sold to Telco Systems), Syncra Systems (sold to Retek), Salesnet (sold to RightNow) and Bitfone (sold to HP).

In January of 2006, David launched Stage 1 Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. Investments include Carbonite (IPO 2011 NASDAQ:CARB), e-Centives (sold to Catalina) , Skyhook Wireless (sold to TruePosition) , Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK), AdelaVoice, Instream, OwnerIQ, Veloxum, Paydiant, FlashNotes, XPeerient (sold to Net-Net), Delfigo Security, Wing Power Energy, Greater Good, Phantom Alert, TimeTrade, Zapoint, OnePin, Myxer, Cuesol (sold to Catalina Marketing), Xpeerient (sold to NET(net)), Magnify Media, go2 (merged with 80108), FrameMedia (sold to Scala!), Auspice (sold to Arris), WorldWinner (sold to Liberty Media), Banshee Wines, Newburyport Brewing, PureCars, OpenBay, deepDB, Marxent Labs, Autonet Mobile, Carvoyant, Parelastic, Dashbell, Vivox, Promoboxx, Ditto, Mobee, Sitewit, Coherent Path, ConnectTowers, Prime Student Loan, Glanola, Narvii, Nexercise, Donde Esta, and Zink.

As a fourteen-year member of Common Angels, David is an active angel investor (30 angel investments) and a strong supporter of entrepreneurs across the country. David is a mentor at the Harvard Innovation Lab.

In June of 2010, David launched S1 Capital Partners, a later stage secondary/growth equity investment vehicle with Rod Randall. S1 Capital made its first investment into YMAX, Corp, a leading CLEC/VOIP provider in North America and creators of the MagicJack-branded consumer service offering. YMAX went public (NASDAQ:CALL) later in 2010 by purchasing VocalTec, a leading softswitch provider.

David holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School with second year honors and BS in Computer Science from Drexel University where he graduated first in his science class.

David’s investment areas of focus are: mobile applications and systems, consumer and business cloud-based applications, the Internet of Things, commercial drones, alternative energy, content and gaming, IPTV, virtualization, e-commerce, location based services, security, the connected car, big data, and data communications equipment.