Daniel Hoffer

Daniel Hoffer is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, known for his role as Co-Founder and previous Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the hospitality exchange service, CouchSurfing. Presently, Hoffer serves as Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Deep Venture Partners which is an early stage venture capital fund, and immediately prior to that role worked as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development at technology startup Hayden AI, a Series C stage startup backed by TPG. and started his first dot-com company at age 15. While in high school, Hoffer managed an online Bulletin Board System and an educational program designed to connect physically-challenged individuals with their peers in a digital environment.

CouchSurfing

CouchSurfing was co-founded by Hoffer, Sebastian Letuan, and Casey Fenton. Hoffer served as CouchSurfing's Chief Operating Officer during its non-profit phase,

In 2010, after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) denied CouchSurfing's application for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, Hoffer assumed the role of CEO. He subsequently joined Benchmark Capital as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and transitioned CouchSurfing into a for-profit certified B corporation.

In 2011, under Hoffer's leadership, CouchSurfing raised $7.6 million in Series A venture capital funding, led by Benchmark Capital with participation from Point Nine Capital, Gil Penchina, Michael Birch, and others.

After Tandem Capital, Hoffer joined Autotech Ventures as a Managing Director, where he was involved in the company's investments in SWVL, a private transit start-up with headquarters in Dubai and Cairo that later went public on Nasdaq; BusUp, a shuttle platform in Barcelona; These ventures in the bus industry, along with his subsequent senior executive role at Autotech Ventures portfolio company Hayden AI, have led to Hoffer being nicknamed "The Bus King."

Hoffer has made early stage angel investments in many high profile startups including Beanworks (acquired by Quadient), Branch, Firefly, Fishbowl (acquired by Glassdoor), Grove Collaborative (NYSE: GROV), Hayden AI, LoungeBuddy (acquired by American Express), Outdoorsy, and Trucklabs (acquired by Conmet). In 2017, Hoffer participated as an angel investor in the $30 million funding round for SpotHero, an online parking marketplace. In 2020, he was also involved in the $10 million funding round for Preply, an online learning platform.

Hoffer has shared his expertise as a guest lecturer at institutions such as Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Kellogg School of Management, Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. In his leisure time, he is a licensed martial arts instructor. Hoffer currently resides in Menlo Park, California.

Board roles BusUp (Director) Citian (Director) CouchSurfing International (Director) Drover (acquired by Cazoo) (Director) Klearnow.ai (Observer) Marti (IPO) (Observer) Masonhub (Director) Mode Mobile (Director) Mundimoto (Director) Pickup (acquired by PointPickup) (Observer) SWVL (IPO) (Observer) TripLingo (acquired by Travel and Transport) (Director) Trucklabs (acquired by ConMet) (Director)