David is President and Co-Founder at Idea Farm Ventures (IFV), a New York-based consumer & retail venture studio, founded to build and back the next generation of exceptional Millennial lifestyle brands. Inc. Magazine referred to David as the “guru of the direct to consumer movement” for his role in helping and investing in brands like Bonobos, Burrow, Harry’s Jet, and Warby Parker, among others, and he’s also been called “the man who kick-started the direct brand economy.”
Prior to IFV, David had a 20-year academic career at the Wharton School where he held the Xinmei Zhang and Yongge Dai Chaired Professorship, was an award-winning researcher and teacher, and developed Wharton’s first courses on digital marketing and e-commerce.
David speaks globally for clients including Alibaba, Google, Haier, Nike, and Ralph Lauren and authored Location Is (Still) Everything, an authoritative book on how to win in the digital economy. His award-winning academic research has been published in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, and MIT Sloan Management Review. David holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business and an M.S. in Statistics, from Stanford University, as well as an M.Com. (1st Class Honors) and B.Com. from the University of Auckland.
He is a New Zealand Citizen and US Permanent Resident and lives in New York City.