Dave is a senior advisory partner in our Boston office, focusing on healthcare technology. He joined Polaris in 2000 after a first career as a technology operating executive and entrepreneur.
He has been a founding investor or served in a chair capacity for many of the companies with which he’s partnered.
Dave also serves as a managing partner of Polaris Funds VI-IX and Polaris Healthcare Technology Opportunities Fund.
He has a particular interest in AI & ML platforms that transform the patient/provider/payer relationship and enable the next generation of care management.
He currently represents Polaris on the boards of Cohere Health, Proof (Chair), OM1, Sonrai Security and QuellSecure (Chair). He also works with Lob, PathAI, and UpDoc.
Previously, he partnered with other transformative companies from inception through exit, including: Archivas (Hitachi Data Systems), Armorblox (Cisco), Automattic/WordPress, (Iconiq Capital/Tiger Global), Boxever (Sitecore), Bitium (Google), Confluence (TA Associates), CliQr (Cisco), Drizly (Uber), Egnyte (TA Associates/GI Partners), Imprivata (NASDAQ: IMPR, Thoma Bravo), Logentries (NASDAQ: RPD), LogMeIn (NASDAQ: LOGM), MarkMonitor (Thomson Reuters), Phytel (IBM), Profitero (Publicis), Q1 Labs (IBM), Recurly (AKKR), and vKernel (Dell).
Prior to joining Polaris, Dave was chief operating officer of Calico. During his leadership, the company evolved from startup to a public company, achieving over $3.5 billion in market value. Before that, he was senior vice president of worldwide operations for Pure Atria/Rational Software, a publicly-held market leader acquired by IBM for $2 billion. Earlier, in 12 years with Lotus Development in a number of leadership roles including vice president and general manager of sales and services, he helped the company become one of the last generation’s two largest software companies before IBM acquired it for $3.5 billion.
Dave is an Always-On Venture Capital 100 and Venture Capital East 50 recipient (2016-18) and has been named an Always-On “Power Player in the Cloud” (2014-2019), and “FinTech Power Player” (2019). He’s been a mentor for TechStars, Harvard iLab and IBM SmartCamp, a guest lecturer at Harvard, HBS, and MIT, an advisor to Mass General Brigham World Medical Innovation Forum, and a founding member of the Microsoft Advisory Board.
He serves on the Board of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, on its investment committee, and as an advisor to its venture investment efforts.
He holds a B.S. from the University of Rhode Island, where he serves on its Board of Trustees, as Vice Chair of its Foundation Board of Directors, and as an Edwards Society Advisor to the University President.
He also serves on the Rhode Island Governor’s Executive Council for Economic Development & Innovation.