David J. Neff
Membership: Founding Member
Joined: March 2023
Company: Ecliptic Capital
Title: Operating Partner
Interests: VC, Climate Change, Energy Transition
Education: B.S., Public Relations and Business from The University of Texas at Austin and Climate Fellow at Terra.do
Social Media: LinkedIn
Professional Biography
David J. Neff is a senior-level executive, and serial entrepreneur, who has 22 years of creating experiences that impact consumers' lives across roles in marketing, digital product, and strategy.
Currently, he serves as an Operating Partner at Ecliptic Capital where he works with portfolio companies on people, process, marketing, strategy, and culture. He spearheads the fund’s concentration on climate change and energy transition as part of Ecliptic Capital’s Deep Tech thesis.
Mr. Neff’s career was built in the early days of the .com era where he led digital product development, marketing, and strategy with the American Cancer Society ($1.7B). Mr. Neff then founded and ran his own digital consulting firm before joining an Austin agency that he helped sell to PwC. He then joined the leadership team of another Austin startup where he led digital strategy, built a team, created the go-to-market strategy, sold and delivered on eCommerce and product strategy across a wide range of Fortune 500 clients. He then helped leadership sell this firm to Accenture in 2017 for $30m.
Over the past twelve years, past strategy and product clients include Hulu, Verizon, Dell, Lowe's, Southwest Airlines, Pepsi, Lululemon, Office Depot, Build.com, Wolverine Worldwide, and Discover Card. His international experience includes clients such as Tesco, Sky TV, and Kingfisher.
In 2009 David was the CEO and co-founder of an early online donation platform that served clients such as the American Red Cross. In 2014 he became the Founder and CEO of an award-winning nationwide events business that ended in a successful acquisition by a competitor.
Mr. Neff is the author of three books including "The Future of Nonprofits: Thrive and Innovate in the Digital Age" (Wiley, 2011) and IGNITE: Setting your Organization's Culture on Fire with Innovation (IdeaPress, 2016). Mr. Neff is a previous winner of the American Marketing Associations Marketer of the Year. He is a past winner of the Austin Monthly People under 30 to know and the Austin Under 40 awards for up-and-coming professionals.
He’s currently serving on the Board of Directors for the Moody College of Communications at the University of Texas and serves on the Board of Directors for the Multicultural Refugee Center.
Features
Linkedin: Embracing Systemic Complexity Ecliptic Capital Climate
Linkedin: Putting Fun Finance David J Neff