058: Serial Entrepreneur & Angel Investor David Chang

Boston Speaks Up

Guest David Chang is an entrepreneur and angel investor who has held product, marketing and operating roles at six startups and invested in 60 companies. He was most recently the CEO at student loan startup Gradifi, which was acquired by E*TRADE in December 2019. Previously, he was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School and Director of the Babson Summer Venture Program. Chang has a successful track record in hands-on roles at both direct-to-consumer and enterprise companies, six of which were acquired or IPO’d. He previously led the PayPal Boston office and co-founded the Start Tank innovation space and the Where Angel Fund. Before WHERE’s acquisition by PayPal in April 2011, he held the role of VP of Product. Earlier in his career, on the consumer side, Chang was Director of New Products at TripAdvisor. Additionally, he was VP of Marketing and Co-founder of SnapMyLife. On the enterprise side, he was Director of Product Marketing at m-Qube, a pioneer in the mobile content space. He also served as Senior Product Manager at edocs and was a VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs. As a leader in the entrepreneurship community, Chang holds several advisor/board memberships. He is on the board at MITX, an advisor at Harvard Ventures, Nanigans, CO Everywhere, OpenFrame, and Linkwell Health. He has made 60 angel investments in startups such as Crashlytics, clypd, Amino, Logz, Cuseum, CarePort Health, Dashfire, Mogul, Uncharted Play, as well as through the Where Angel Fund and TBD Angels. We’re grateful to share our interview with Chang as he’s one of the most sought out speakers on the topics of startups, fundraising, and the Boston tech ecosystem, and he actively mentors countless students and founders.