David Hose's Page

I met Duncan McCall at a cafe in Palo Alto in the summer of 2007. We were introduced by my friend Rich Wong. I was immediately taken by Duncan's vision of a wiki for places, and before too long we had a series A financing from Polaris Ventures and a development team in Boulder.

I'm a serial entrepreneur and recovering software engineer. I've started a few companies, and I've been a board member and advisor for many companies. You can see some of these on my LinkedIn page.

I've worked on computerized maps off and on since 1980 - the early days when computer graphics had green screens, maps had to be hand-drawn into the computer using specialized drafting boards, the GPS satellites weren't yet launched, and graphics printers were mechanical colored pens.

In 1982 we built an interactive graphics system system for AT&T. They dialed up from New Jersey on a 300 baud modem to design the local calling areas we still use today. There wasn't much error recovery in these early "networks" so whenever noise come on the line (which happened a lot), the map would turn into some crazy quilt and they would have to start again.

1984 we built what I believe is the first mapping software for the IBM PC to display the 1980 US Census results, e.g. population, income and so on. Using aftermarket graphics cards we could get 16 colors in a stunning 640x480 pixels!

In 1986 the NYPD and FBI used our software for real-time anti-terrorist operations. In 1989 with the advent of GPS, we built systems for 9-1-1 services to track real-time movement of emergency vehicles.

And in 1995 I started SignalSoft with two partners. I believed "cellphones will be a huge market and they move around a lot so their location is valuable". In 1998 we launched the first "where's the closest Starbucks" app (sigh). SignalSoft's technology was adopted by cellphone companies all over the world, the company went public in 2000 and we sold to Openwave in 2002.

In 2005 I founded Ideas & Plans, to focus on early stage companies. I also do strategy work for bigger companies because that's interesting too.