Team

Dana Stalder knows what it takes to turn a scrappy start-up into a strong, independent company. Dana has managed nimble ventures as well as 2,500-person teams. He has sat on both sides of the table in acquisition talks and sold to consumers, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike. His experience cuts across multiple disciplines including sales, marketing, finance, technology and product management at companies such as eBay, Netscape and PayPal.

“My goal each day is to help entrepreneurs get where they want to go. I have been in their shoes, struggling to launch new businesses, and I have scaled high-growth public companies,” he says. “I am passionate about identifying and developing future leaders and enabling them to use their individual talents to make a lasting impact.”

Dana was born and raised in Silicon Valley, and studied business and economics at Santa Clara University. After college he worked at Ernst & Young advising technology companies such as Quantum, Sun Microsystems, Remedy, Netscape, and Intuit.

In 1994 he left to help build Netscape, then a nascent, few-month-old, pre-revenue company boldly defining the ways in which consumers and enterprises were going to use the Internet. In his four-year tenure, Dana held several executive positions in finance, sales and operations. 

Dana left Netscape after its sale to AOL in 1998 and became a member of the founding executive team of Respond.com, an early pioneer in online lead generation. There, he served as the company’s Vice President of Business Development and CFO.

Dana joined eBay in 2001.  As Vice President of Internet Marketing, Dana managed the company’s global customer acquisition strategy and a multi-hundred million-dollar Internet marketing budget, where his responsibilities included running eBay’s search engine marketing and search engine optimization initiatives. Dana was also responsible for eBay’s Strategic Partnership Group, which generated more than several hundred million in revenue from third party partnerships and media sales. 

In 2004 Dana joined PayPal, where he managed all business operations, including product, sales, marketing and, eventually, technology. Dana started PayPal’s international business from scratch, and led PayPal’s expansion beyond the eBay platform onto other online retail sites. He also initiated a number of other startup projects, including PayPal Mobile and the PayPal Developer Platform.

Dana left PayPal in 2008 to join Matrix Partners, where he invests in software and Internet businesses that target consumers as well as corporations. He is a board member at iRise, a privately held company that is reinventing how software applications are designed with its innovative prototyping tools; GOGII, a mobile communications company that is taking text messaging to the next level; Polyvore.com, the web’s largest fashion community, where members can discover or start fashion trends; QuinStreet, the leading online lead generation and performance marketing company; and Zong, the leading mobile payment service used by online gaming and social networking websites.

Outside of the office Dana loves to ski the bumps on Granite Chief in Squaw Valley, is an avid wake boarder and enjoys coaching youth sports.

Dana’s strong background in product management, sales and finance has been invaluable to iRise. His combination of operational experience in successful businesses that cater to large enterprises, small businesses and consumers is truly unique. We constantly challenge ourselves to tune our product and business strategy in order to further increase our competitive advantage. Dana has supported us every step of the way and consistently provides valuable new insights, ideas and feedback.

Emmet Keeffe, Co-founder and CEO, iRise