David Wetherell is a venture capitalist and former entrepreneur. His career began in software development in a variety of industries. The first software company he started, Softrend, Inc., developed the first software allowing PCs to access and download data from corporate mainframes, and one of the first integrated office software tool suites for desktop computers. He later led a leveraged buyout of a direct marketing company, College Marketing Group, and transformed it into CMGI. Since taking over the company, sales rose from $3M to over $1B annually. There, he started numerous Internet companies and the first venture capital firm for the Internet, @Ventures, which was responsible for the first investments in a number of key early companies in the Internet, including Lycos, GeoCities, Half.com (a large part of eBay), Vicinity (now, Microsoft's mapping technology), PlanetAll (part of Amazon.com), WebCT, and MyFamily.com (also known as Ancestry.com). Today, he is chairman of CMGI, which has directed its venture capital efforts to clean energy technologies, and owns ModusLink, the largest supply chain management company in the world serving the high tech industry. In addition, Mr. Wetherell has personal venture investments in real estate, private aviation, and biotech. He started Greenwich Biotech Ventures, a venture capital company for the biotech industry in 2005. Mr. Wetherell has received numerous awards, including Ernst and Young's New England Entrepreneur of the Year, in 2000. He obtained his BA in Mathematics from Ohio Wesleyan University and an honorary doctorate from Bryant College. |