David L. Cremin

David Lawrence Cremin is an American venture capitalist and co-founder of the seed stage venture capital firm DFJ Frontier.

Beginning in 1982, Cremin recorded and performed music, first as a member of Baton Rouge (Atlantic /EastWest Records), and then as guitarist with Vincent Rocco (Elektra Records). He then founded Vis-a-Vis Entertainment, Inc. representing and recording a number of artists including Michael Wolff (The Arsenio Hall Show, Sony Music), Downset (Mercury/Polygram Records) and For Love Not Lisa (EastWest Records). He also produced and recorded Engines of Aggression (Priority Records) and Ether (Criminal Records). Subsequent to Vis-a-Vis Entertainment, Cremin began his venture capital career in 1998 co-founding Zone Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm focused on media technology ventures where he was responsible for fund management, fund raising, deal sourcing and due diligence. While at Zone Ventures, he helped lead an investment in DivX, a video compression technology and distribution company, which completed a successful IPO (Nasdaq:DIVX, subsequently purchased by Sonic Solutions [Nasdaq: SNIC], which was purchased by Rovi [Nasdaq: ROVI]). He also served as a trustee for The BizWorld Foundation in San Francisco from 1999–2010.

In 2002, Cremin co-founded DFJ Frontier with Scott Lenet and DFJ. He is a member of the board of Directors of Prolacta Bioscence, Mogreet, uSamp, Janrain, MyWinesDirect, Lottay and AppleTree. Cremin led DFJ Frontier’s investment in CrystalVoice Communications, a Santa Barbara area company that was purchased by Global IP Sound. He has also served on the boards of SkyGrid, Clear Access, OnTech, Iconix Video, Chimeros, BondMart, and Dragnet Solutions.

Cremin started teaching venture capital and entrepreneurship at the Orfalea College of Business at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo in 2003; he was Adjunct Professor there until 2009. He has helped form and served on the Advisory Board of the Entrepreneurship Center at UC Santa Barbara, where he was an Adjunct Professor from 2003 to 2010. He has guest lectured at colleges and universities across North America and in Europe.

Cremin holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

Cremin is the son of Lawrence A. Cremin, a professor of education at Teachers College in New York, where he was president from 1974–1984 He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1981 for "American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876," the second volume of his three-volume history of U.S. schools

Cremin is the grandson of Arthur T. Cremin a serial entrepreneur, who among other things created a chain of music schools, providing inexpensive music lessons in neighborhoods across New York City, and providing frequent classical music concerts highlighting the schools’ students at various venues including Carnegie Hall.