David Pakman

Elected in 2015
Resident of New Canaan
Parent: 2019, 2022 and 2025
University of Pennsylvania


As a Managing Partner at CoinFund in New York, David focuses on early and growth-stage venture investing in crypto and blockchain technologies. He joined CoinFund in October 2021 after 13 years of venture investing at Venrock. His active investments include Dapper Labs, FLOW, Rarible, Running Tide, and Simbe Robotics. He is also a Board Member of Arduino. He led both the Series A and Series B rounds in Dollar Shave Club and sat on the board until that company was acquired by Unilever for $1B in July of 2016. In April 2017, he was named the 55th top venture capitalist in the world by CB Insights. Spurred by his computer science background and entrepreneurial experience as cofounder of Myplay and then CEO of eMusic, David developed an early interest in mining Bitcoin and then building ethereum mining rigs. This led to his first crypto investment in 2017. He has been focused on layer one smart contract platforms, Web 3.0 infrastructure and has been particularly prescient on consumer adoption of NFTs. While much of his early venture career was focused on traditional tech investments, the last several years he has found more and more compelling investment opportunities in the broader crypto ecosystem, a trend that led David to more recently shift his focus entirely to the emergent technology. Before Myplay, he was Vice President at N2K Entertainment, which created the first digital music download service. He also was the co-creator of Apple’s Music Group and a product manager at Apple. Pakman is a graduate of and a former member of the Board of Overseers at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science with a degree in Computer Science Engineering and is an active drummer. He testified in front of Congress regarding internet music streaming in 2012, 2016 and 2017.
 
David blogs at http://www.pakman.com and tweets at @pakman.
 
David is married to Meredith Yoder Pakman (whose sister, Jenny Yoder Schaffer, attended SLS). They have three children - Clara '19, Sam '22 and Eloise '25. David is an active drummer, DJ and songwriter, tennis player, fitness enthusiast, and amateur photographer.
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St. Luke’s School is a secular (non-religious), private school in New Canaan, CT for grades 5 through 12 serving over 40 towns in Connecticut and New York. Our exceptional academics and diverse co-educational community foster students’ intellectual and ethical development and prepare them for top colleges. St. Luke’s Leading with Humanity curriculum builds the commitment to serve and the confidence to lead.