Dave Lerner
Founder @ Rugged Ventures
New York, United States
Dave Lerner is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and Director of Entrepreneurship @ Columbia University. He is also the host of @venturestudio where he engages with entrepreneurs, investors, founders and other vibrant members of the New York entrepreneurial ecosystem and beyond. One of his latest projects is @startupgenome, where, in partnershipwith the Kauffman Foundation and Endeavor Global, they are mapping the entire world’s entire early-stage investment and entrepreneurial ecosystems.He's also Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School and was the Director of Columbia’s Venture Lab for seven years where he spun-out 70+ technology start-ups.His personal blog, www.davelerner.com/blog, explores the worlds of university entrepreneurship, angel/venture investing, and startups and he's a frequent contributor to Amex OPENForum, Forbes, and Business Insider, whose SAI group recently named him one of the “top 100 most influential New Yorkers in the digital business community” and “one of NYC’s top 100 early stage investors”.He serves on the Board of New York Tech Meetup, as Board Member the Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School, and as a Board Member of both the New York Venture Community and Columbia Venture Community.
- Total investments:
- 13
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 8%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Dave Lerner invests in
Stages Dave Lerner invests in
Countries Dave Lerner invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Round size
- Seed
- $500k–$1.7M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Advertising 4 (31%)
- Finance 2 (15%)
- Internet 2 (15%)
- Analytics 2 (15%)
- Health Care 2 (15%)
Stage
- Seed 7 (54%)
- Pre-Seed 3 (23%)
- Angel 1 (8%)
- Series B 1 (8%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 1 (8%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fitbod allows users to maximize the use of indoor gym equipment and confidence to train effectively for strength.Using machine learning, Fitbod analyzes tracked workout data to build a real-time strength-training plan tailored to your physical capability, available equipment, and fitness goals. By turning activity data into concrete fitnessguidance, Fitbod innovates beyond current fitness apps, which offer fixed exercise plans that can’t adapt to unique user needs.It was launched in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. | Pre-Seed / May 03, 2017 | ||
| Fitbod allows users to maximize the use of indoor gym equipment and confidence to train effectively for strength.Using machine learning, Fitbod analyzes tracked workout data to build a real-time strength-training plan tailored to your physical capability, available equipment, and fitness goals. By turning activity data into concrete fitnessguidance, Fitbod innovates beyond current fitness apps, which offer fixed exercise plans that can’t adapt to unique user needs.It was launched in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. | Angel / Feb 01, 2017 | ||
| Mantl is a customer-centric outer core ecosystem that gives banks and credit unions the flexibility to innovate using modern technology while owning their brand throughout the entire customer lifecycle. The company's platform provides customers with a delightful user experience and banks with powerful workflow management and automation tools.Mantl was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in New York, USA. | $1.1M / Seed / Nov 17, 2016 | ||
| Joany is your trusted healthcare concierge. We simplify buying and using health insurance, all year long. Using data, machine learning and humans, Joany takes of everything healthcare, so you don't have to. | $1.7M / Seed / Oct 23, 2016 | ||
| Padlet is an Internet application that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily. It works like an online sheet of paper where people can put any content (e.g. images, videos, documents, text) anywhere on the page, together with anyone, from any device. Think of it like a multimedia friendly, free-form, real-time wiki. | $1.2M / Seed / Sep 18, 2015 | ||
| Pilot is a new kind of internet provider for businesses in urban cities. | $775K / Seed / Jan 28, 2015 | ||
| Opticlose is the refreshingly innovative software platform for high volume sales teams. They're dedicated to continuously optimizing the performance of your sales team. More calls answered, more receptive prospects, a better match between rep and prospect, and always... more closes. | Venture - Series Unknown / Aug 19, 2014 | ||
| Contently is a technology company that helps enterprise companies create results-driven content by providing them with smart technology, vetted creative talent, and proven expertise. Its mission is to build a better media world, for creatives who live to tell stories and tell stories to live, for businesses that want better ways to connect withconsumers, and for everyday people who rely on stories to understand the world better. | $9M / Series B / Jan 15, 2014 | ||
| AdYapper tracks display and mobile ads, generating detailed verification data, consumer sentiment, and viewability monitoring on 95% of all ad impressions. We generate real-time analytics across the entire ad buying ecosystem and centralize the data into one platform to identify wasted ad spend and provide direction on how best to reallocate therecovered ad spend to make in-flight campaign decisions. In short, AdYapper makes advertising performance data actionable so advertisers can optimize, and increase the efficacy of, their ad buys. | $1.2M / Seed / Sep 05, 2013 | ||
| Jukely is a club that grants its members daily guestlist access to hundreds of concerts, parties, and DJ sets every month. It analyzes music taste data across the social graph, and for every show, it magically matches with different friends and even friends of friends who'd be good to go with. It then makes it very easy to ping that group, tostart a conversation around the show.It was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. | Pre-Seed / Jul 10, 2013 | ||
| See all 13 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Rugged Ventures
Rugged Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in seed-stage companies. Founded by Dave Lerner, Rugged Ventures has been making seed stage investments since 2001.
Rugged Ventures Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
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Dave Lerner
Founder
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FAQ
What does Dave Lerner invest in?
Dave Lerner invests primarily in Advertising, Finance and Internet startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 13 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What is Dave Lerner's check size?
Dave Lerner typically joins rounds of $500k–$1.7M at Seed. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Dave Lerner participates in.
How do I contact Dave Lerner?
Public channels for Dave Lerner include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Dave Lerner last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Dave Lerner closed in May 2017. Shizune tracks 13 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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