David B. Pakman

This article is about the internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist David B. Pakman. For the political talk show host, see David Pakman.

David B. Pakman
Born	January 29, 1969 (1969-01-29) (age 42) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist

David B. Pakman (born January 29, 1969 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. As a Partner in Venrock’s New York City office, David focuses on early stage venture investing in internet and digital media companies. His active investments include Media6Degrees, Smartling and Crunchyroll.

Education & Personal Life

Pakman is a graduate of and a member of the Board of Overseers^[1] at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science with a BSE (1991) degree in Computer Science Engineering and is an avid musician and songwriter.

At Penn, Pakman's Senior Design Project advisor was David J. Farber. He was the co-founder of Penn Engineering's Dining Philosophers^[2], the computer science club that, at the time, was Penn's chapter of the Association from Computing Machinery or the ACM.

He is married with three children.

Career

In 1991, Pakman joined Apple Inc.’s System Software Product Marketing group and later co-created Apple’s Music Group. There he co-founded the Macintosh New York Music Festival and co-produced the then-largest industry webcast to-date, the 1997 GRAMMY Awards.

In 2003, Pakman joined Dimensional Associates, a private equity firm focused on acquiring distressed digital media companies. The firm bought eMusic from Vivendi Universal and Pakman became the COO. In 2005, Pakman became the CEO and grew eMusic to become the world’s leading digital retailer of independent music, second only to iTunes in number of downloads sold. In the three years that Pakman ran it, he grew the business by more than 850%, from $7M in revenues to more than $68M. Pakman transformed the business from an obscure also-ran with 50,000 subscribers to the second largest digital music retailer in the world, with more than 400,000 subscribers and more than 12% market share (according to the NPD Group).

Prior to joining eMusic, Pakman was Co-Founder and President of Business Development and Public Policy at Myplay, Inc., the company he co-founded in 1999 in Redwood City, California with Doug Camplejohn that introduced the “digital music locker” and pioneered the locker category. In 2001, Myplay was sold to Bertelsmann’s ecommerce Group^[3] where Pakman became the SVP of Corporate Development and Public Policy. Before Myplay, he was Vice President at N2K Entertainment, which created the first digital music download service^[4]

Pakman served on the Board of NARM (National Association of Recording Merchandisers). He was formerly a board member of DiMA (Digital Media Association) in Washington, D.C. and co-chair of its Music Licensing Committee. He has testified before Congress^[5] and the NTIA^[6] about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), guest-lectured at The Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Columbia and MIT, and has spoken at hundreds of conferences and public events. In May 2007 he delivered the Commencement Address at Penn Engineering’s 251st Commencement^[7]

Pakman also serves on the Board of Trustees of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies (see JSTOR) and holds a board seat with the New York Venture Capital Association.

External links

• Venrock

References

1. ^ Penn Engineering Board of Overseers
2. ^ Penn Dining Philosophers
3. ^ http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-262309.html
4. ^ http://google.brand.edgar-online.com/EFX_dll/EDGARpro.dll?FetchFilingHtmlSection1?SectionID=1420961-7006-81392&SessionID=RyBFWFEXcwMFaP7
5. ^ http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/testimony/pakman.pdf
6. ^ http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/occ/dmca2001/104gdmca.htm
7. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZsQwUwFYv8&feature=PlayList&p=4B60B0828C165B1A&index=0&playnext=1

Persondata
Name	Pakman, David B.
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	January 29, 1969
Place of birth	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Date of death
Place of death