Dave Lavinsky

Co-Founder & President

Job Title:

Co-Founder & President of Growthink
 

Expertise:

Business Plans, Business Consulting, Capital Raising, New Venture Development, Investment Banking, Business Metrics, Sales & Marketing

 

Years of Experience:

25+ years of experience writing business plans, providing business consulting and starting & growing companies

 

Formal Education:

BS, Commerce from the University of Virginia
MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA

 

Books Published:

Author of the best selling book “Start At The End: How Companies Can Grow Bigger and Faster By Reversing Their Business Plan,” published by Wiley.

 

Biography:

Dave is an internationally renowned expert in the fields of business planning, capital raising, and new venture development, and author of the world’s #1 business plan template.

Over the past decade, Dave has guest lectured at top universities, developed over 100 business plans, and has written hundreds of articles on entrepreneurship, business planning and capital-raising. He is also the author of Start At The End: How Companies Can Grow Bigger and Faster By Reversing Their Business Plan, published by Wiley in November 2012.

You can read some of Dave’s articles on our blog and in Growthink’s Business Plan Writing Help Center. On our blog, you can also listen to numerous interviews that Dave has conducted with prominent venture capitalists such as Guy Kawasaki and Brad Feld, and prominent angel investors like John Morris, former Chairman of Tech Coast Angels, the largest angel investor network in the country.

Dave has helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs over the past decades and is proud of the Growthink Reviews that have resulted.

Dave walks the talk. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, having started and exited multiple Internet and product-focused ventures, including Emerge Juice and Nutrition Systems – a wellness products developer and distributor; Shoutmouth – a niche music -focused social networking site; Z Reporter LLC – owner of over 3,000 niche-focused information websites; and TopPayingKeywords – a Search Engine Marketing & Optimization research data firm.

Dave is a past board member of the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance and a winner of the Anderson School at UCLA’s Knapp New Venture Competition.

As a co-founder of Growthink, Dave has managed more than 150 client engagements across all of Growthink’s practice areas. He particularly enjoys helping early stage companies prepare for significant growth as he has done with Dakim, Sandel Medical, XCom Wireless and numerous other businesses. Dave also conducted the market research and wrote the initial business plan for KeySpan Energy Services, now part of National Grid, which grew from zero to over $1 billion in revenues in less than three years.

Prior to Growthink, Dave gained professional management consulting, marketing consulting and market research experience with FIND/SVP (now Guideline), BPA International and The NPD Group.

Dave has an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA and earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two children.