David Kalt
Angel Investor
Chicago, United States
David Kalt is a seed investor in Chicago focused on E-Commerce and Music. David's background is a blend between entrepreneurship, building technology firms, and a passion for music and gear. David Kalt is the founder and CEO of Reverb.com, an online marketplace for used, vintage and handmade guitars and gear. Kalt is also the owner of the Chicago Music Exchange, one of the world's largest vintage guitardealers.Prior to launching Reverb.com, Kalt was the cofounder and CEO of online broker optionsXpress (#10 on the 2005 Inc 500 list), which went public in 2005 and was sold to Schwab in 2008 for $1 billion.Kalt was also the founder of ClientBASE, the first CRM solution for travel agents and tour group operators, which is now offered by the Sabre Travel Network.
- Total investments:
- 9
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 11%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries David Kalt invests in
Stages David Kalt invests in
Countries David Kalt invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Round size
- Seed
- $500k–$5M
Investment Focus
Industry
- E-Commerce 3 (33%)
- Music 2 (22%)
- Software 2 (22%)
- Marketplace 2 (22%)
- Apps 1 (11%)
Stage
- Seed 5 (56%)
- Angel 1 (11%)
- Series A 1 (11%)
- Funding Round 1 (11%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Songfinch is a platform to buy custom songs from professional artists. | $5M / Seed / Apr 04, 2022 | ||
| Disputes and litigation are a massive distraction and waste of money and time for you and your business. At least $200B is spent on litigation-related costs each year. New Era solves this. With our fully-digital platform and process, organizations and individuals get access to the most experienced arbitrators and mediators in the U.S. The result isfair, high-quality, and fast resolutions of your disputes, saving you up to 90% in legal fees and time, so you can focus on the things that matter in your life and your business. | $4.6M / Mar 15, 2022 | ||
| Disputes and litigation are a massive distraction and waste of money and time for you and your business. At least $200B is spent on litigation-related costs each year. New Era solves this. With our fully-digital platform and process, organizations and individuals get access to the most experienced arbitrators and mediators in the U.S. The result isfair, high-quality, and fast resolutions of your disputes, saving you up to 90% in legal fees and time, so you can focus on the things that matter in your life and your business. | $4.6M / Seed / Feb 24, 2022 | ||
| Fleet builds open source software to manage and secure computing infrastructure: employee laptops, cloud servers, and more. Our technology helps IT and security teams build trust within their organization, while getting their jobs done more effectively. | $5M / Seed / Jan 20, 2022 | ||
| Customer-to-customer marketplace for books | $1.8M / Seed / Aug 01, 2021 | ||
| Songfinch is a platform to buy custom songs from professional artists. | $2.3M / Seed / Jan 10, 2021 | ||
| Reverb.com is a provider of an online marketplace intended for new, used, and vintage music gear. The company's marketplace was built to foster safe and secure transactions, inspire musicians to discover more ways to expand their playing and sound, and cultivate the most vibrant and inspired music community anywhere online. | $2.3M / Series A / Nov 19, 2013 | ||
| Reverb.com is a provider of an online marketplace intended for new, used, and vintage music gear. The company's marketplace was built to foster safe and secure transactions, inspire musicians to discover more ways to expand their playing and sound, and cultivate the most vibrant and inspired music community anywhere online. | $500K / Seed / Jun 18, 2013 | ||
| SureSpeak is a web based coaching platform aimed at solving the current inefficiencies and costs associated with corporate training.The ProblemCompanies spend billions of dollars each year on training and coaching-in 2006 over $129 billion. However, this training is often ineffective or very expensive or both. Ineffective-Studies show thatafter 4 weeks, 85% of what was learned in a classroom setting is forgotten. Additionally, teaching interpersonal and communication skills in a classroom environment is rarely effective. Lastly, scheduling conflicts often cause inefficiency and delay in connecting a person in need of coaching and a coach. Expensive - Companies spend money on travel, lodging, meals and other related costs in order to get people to training sessions. Companies also deploy e-learning solutions which offer little or no interaction or practice and suffer from miserable completion rates.Additionally, current market conditions have caused the majority of enterprises to cut training and travel budgets significantly and look for cost effective means to deliver training enterprise-wide.The SolutionSureSpeak is a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider of web-based video coaching platform and tools. Executive coaches & enterprises use SureSpeak to improve sales, presentation and communication skills leading to enhanced revenues, higher customer retention and improved operating efficiencies. SureSpeak users watch modeling videos that demonstrate desired performance — for example "How to close the sale." Then with just an internet connection and a webcam, the user records their version and self-reviews. Typically the user will re-record multiple times until satisfied (current record to save ratio is 6:1). Practicing or role-playing in a private setting has proven to be very desirable for SureSpeak users as opposed to group role-playing which is embarrassing and counter-productive. When the user is satisfied with his "SureSpeak" he saves, and his coach receives an automatic email alert notifying him that a SureSpeak is waiting for review. The coach then logs in from wherever he may be and whenever he has time. This is a key to the efficiency of SureSpeak. The coach provides feedback in written form, in score format — based on customizable categories such as body language, tone, enthusiasm, message content, sincerity, etc. The coach also can record a video back to the user. When the coach saves his feedback the system notifies the user that his score SureSpeak has been reviewed, and likewise the user logs in when convenient to review. Additionally, each user can receive feedback from unlimited coaches, peers, managers, etc.SureSpeak's patented platform is unique in that it is asynchronous — meaning the practice and coaching is split up into 3 distinct parts — practice, coaching/feedback, and review of feedback. These can be done independent of each other without delay and at any time. Most training fails in that no video record is provided and if it is not efficient or readily accessible online and cannot be shared. Synchronous training solutions such as video-conference fail as they still require both parties to be available at the same time. | $1.6M / Angel / Sep 01, 2007 |
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FAQ
What does David Kalt invest in?
David Kalt invests primarily in E-Commerce, Music and Software startups, most often at Seed and Angel stage. Most of the 9 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 David Kalt's check size?
David Kalt typically joins rounds of $500k–$5M 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 David Kalt participates in.
How do I contact David Kalt?
Public channels for David Kalt 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 David Kalt last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for David Kalt closed in Apr 2022. Shizune tracks 9 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 Sep 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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