About me

Designer & entrepreneur, former architect. Partner, Anthemis (Venture Capital)

EIR, MRL Ventures (instigated project which became Yelp). Co-founder: Moreover.com, first news aggregator (acquired Verisign); Origins (acquired D.C. Thomson); Realtime Anywhere (one of UK's first Internet co's). Co-author, RSS.

Om Malik: "David...has a nasty habit of predicting the future before everyone else."

Design

My mission in life is to be able to design anything from a door handle to a city.

So far: buildings, interiors & set designs as an architect and business models, financial products, software products, websites & web standards working in technology.

As an architect, trained under Peter Cook (Archigram) and worked for Norman Foster (Apple 'spaceship' HQ) then stadium rock set designers, Fisher Park (Pink Floyd, U2). As a technologist, worked on Internet products since the beginning of the web in the mid 90s, co-founding four startups and two incubators.

+ Entrepreneur

Co-founded four successful companies (RTA, Origins, Moreover, MRL ventures [Yelp]), in London, NY and San Francisco, typically leading product.

Mentored and taken board roles in several others, mostly startup and private companies, one public.

= Venture Design

By combining the design of products with their integral business models, you can design businesses: Venture Design. This relatively new field is what I specialise in and helped develop.

For a detailed explanation of what venture design is and how it works, click on the link below.

Founder: Wists

Wists was the first social shopping site, in 2004, developing the concept behind Pinterest.

Co-founder: Moreover

Co-founded with Angus Bankes & Nick Denton, (Founder Gawker Media). Sold to Verisgn.

Companies: Origins.net

Origins.net, subscription online genealogy database

Co-founder: Realtime Anywhere

One of the first digital agencies, and the first Internet company, in London's 'Tech City'.

Services: Curations

A series of curated sites, that constituted some of the first product blogs.

Founder: Curations.com, Smashing Telly

Part of Curations.com, Smashing Telly was the first curated TV channel

RSS

I co-authored the RSS 1.0 standard

RSS PING

A standard for realtime search co-developed with Matt Mullenweg, founder Wordpress

One Line Bio

A standard for simple biographical information. Co authored with Ian Davis.

Information Theory & Evolution

Some applications of information theory to open systems.

Use Case-study House

Architecture designed using the same principles as web User Experience

UX: Standard Model of the Standard Model

Improved infographic of the standard model of physics, made at the CERN Webfest 2012, with Carsten Burgard

Architecture: Translucent Skyscraper

A design I did while working for Norman Foster for a skyscraper in London

Architecture: House of Flags

Designs for buildings with loose fabric external skins.

Architecture: Building Within a Building

A modern wooden structure built inside an 18th Century barn to create a building within a building.

Architecture: retail and event designs

Working with clients such as Caterpillar and Coca Cola, I've produced a series of events and retail designs.

Landscape design: Industrial Park

Design for a park in a siding with rusting steam trains overgrown with plants.

Architecture: Millennium Bridge

A collaboration with Alex Oliver, shortlisted for a millennium competition.

Architecture: Jewish Museum, London

A collaboration with Opher Elia-Shaul for a proposed new building for the Jewish Museum in London