Pomona College

University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Aventurine

Tech for Rights transforms doom scrolling into activism with just a few clicks. Our platform seamlessly integrates fundraising tech with expert-designed, AI-optimized messaging to maximize impact. Our go-to-market focus areas are reproductive freedom, climate, and representative democracy.

Tech4Rights

Co-Founder | CTO

Cyrano brings real Emotional Intelligence to technology partners, enabling them to understand how their users and customers think, feel, and make decisions.

Cyrano.ai

Board Member

Pat provides cloud based artificial intelligence technology to application developers and websites.  Pat's groundbreaking new approach to Natural Language Understanding (NLU) allows developers to conduct realistic and useful conversations between humans and machines.  Pat's linguistic architecture leads to much faster setup and maintenance than earlier generations of AI technology, with unparalleled accuracy.  Pat is particularly relevant in Voice First and chatbot applications.

Pat Inc

Aventurine focuses on inventors, researchers and entrepreneurs developing the next generation of science based startups with strong and impactful market potential. We look for rich foundational intellectual property potential; our in-house IP strategy practice provides unparalleled assistance to our clients.

Realizing that not every inventor is a nascent CEO, Aventurine helps co-create opportunities to take exceptional innovations to market through the Aventurine Studio, strengthen and advise science and tech teams, source investment capital, and execute growth strategies. We also advise investment managers in other funds and family offices that own technology companies with substantial intellectual property assets.

Aventurine Capital Group

Founder | Chief Investment Officer

Sococo developed several new social communications technologies from lab to market. During his tenure as Chairman & CEO, Sococo raised over $25 million in private financing and expanded business operations from North America to both Asia and Europe.  Sococo's award winning Team Space business communication product was the go-to-market vehicle for the company's patented social communications technology.  DVW Capital invested at the seed stage.

David lead four years of intensive R&D, IP portfolio development and market trials leading up to the Team Space launch.  Over the following two years sales grew each quarter and revenue per user increased sharply.  By the end of his term as CEO, David's team had established distribution relationships in the UK, Germany and Japan based on a business model developed through direct sales to early adopters and thought leaders in North America.

Sococo

Founder | CEO

Vertical market provider of enterprise software for the wood products and building materials markets.  Sold to Solarsoft, May 2012.  Currently part of Epicor.  DVW Capital was engaged by the mature business to provide an independent director for the company's board and to deliver strategic planning guidance to management.

Progressive Solutions

Strategy adviser to entrepreneurs and CEOs of technology companies.  Clients were primarily mature businesses located throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  Centillion Group also conducted invitation-only strategic planning workshops and finance seminars focused on sustainable growth and improved exit potential for technology businesses.  The firm delivered services directly and through a marketing partnership with Progress Software.

Centillion Group

Market leader in business planning software for small business.  An early innovator in online sales and marketing for software products, Palo Alto Software grew to outsell all of it's competitors combined as a product company.  PAS then successfully transitioned their technology into a cloud-based business service.  DVW Capital invested midstage to provide growth capital and strategic advice.

Palo Alto Software

Rumblefish pioneered network based music licensing.  Throughout its history, Rumblefish has provided music for top TV shows, films, ad agencies and video game publishers.  In 2008, the company struck a landmark licensing deal with YouTube. In December 2013, Rizvi Traverse backed SESAC's acquisition of a majority stake in Rumblefish.

Rumblefish created the first online business resource for fully copyright-cleared music. The company has amassed the world’s largest music catalog for social media.  Rumblefish's diverse clientele includes Animoto, Virtual Active, Amazon Studios, Kaiser Permanente and Google.  DVW Capital invested at the seed stage.

Rumblefish

DVW Capital focuses on emerging technologies.  We assist entrepreneurs and investors as they navigate the rapidly evolving worlds of technology, intellectual property and finance. We focus on companies that build value by investing in talented pioneers building practical technology in large markets.

High quality intellectual property has never been more complex, or more valuable.  Promising companies can end up starved for growth capital.  Innovative technologies can be buried under flawed product concepts.  Our investment strategy targets these businesses to bridge those gaps.

DVW Capital Inc.

Founder | President

Pioneer in digital rights management and secure distributed systems.  During David's tenure he also served as a board member, Chairman of InterTrust International and Senior Vice President of Research.  InterTrust was listed on NASDAQ in 1999 and was acquired by Sony/Phillips in 2003.  InterTrust won a landmark settlement in a patent case versus Microsoft in 2004.  InterTrust also settled a major patent infringement suit against Apple in 2014.

Intertrust pioneered an entire generation of secure computing and data rights management technologies that power modern media distribution, app stores, and now cloud based enterprise data sets in energy, auto and healthcare. All major media distribution systems and app stores are built under license to Intertrust’s technologies.

Intertrust holds fundamental patents on trusted computing and digital rights management (DRM) that lie at the heart of modern secure systems, electronic commerce environments, and consumer devices. The inventions describe the fundamentals of systems that protect and manage digital information in smartphones and tablets, connected cars, consumer media, healthcare, enterprise, education, government, smart grids and other next-generation distributed computing platforms. 

The company operates a successful global licensing business supported by ongoing research and development. Licensees include Adobe, Apple, the BBC, Fujitsu, HTC, LG, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Pantech, Phillips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sony, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, and Vodaphone.

Intertrust

CD-ROM Solutions created market leading information products for electronic publishers.  In the early 1990s, large capacity CD-ROM discs provided the first widely distributed platform for delivering big data applications. The company's data scientists, software engineers and visual designers provided CD-ROM publishing services to many market leaders at the time, including Hearst Business Communications, Jane's Information Group and US Government customers.  EPR, which later became InterTrust, was a client.

CD-ROM Solutions

Co-Founder | CEO

Nimbus was an early pioneer in commercial data science.  Developer of high speed search technology for very large data sets.  Collaborated with ROMWARE inventor Frank Elmore on optimized read-only index and retrieval software initially used for CD-ROM based archives and publications.  David devised efficient indexing and retrieval algorithms and digital transcoding systems as part of the original team of seven employees in the US recruited to launch NIS out of parent company Nimbus Records.  Nimbus CD was ultimately listed on NASDAQ in 1995 and operates today as TIBCO Nimbus.

Nimbus Information Systems

Co-Founder | Lead Software Engineer

An early adopter of desktop publishing and digital media.  The Backyard Press used new technology to provide graphic design services for local businesses as well as to publish a community newspaper.  The company's pioneering approach to digital design positioned The Backyard Press as a leader in both production quality and price.

David Van Wie