David J. Freschman, a U.S. venture capitalist who worked as a consultant to ABC’s Emmy-winning reality television show “Shark Tank,” has died. He was 52.
He died on March 17 at his home in Hockessin, Delaware, according to his wife, Robin Freschman. The cause was pancreatic cancer.
Freschman, the managing principal of Wilmington, Delaware-based Innovation Capital Advisors, provided venture capital to dozens of East Coast companies and was an adviser to ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank” from its first season in 2009.
The program, starring billionaire investor Mark Cuban and New York real-estate mogul Barbara Corcoran, features aspiring entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to a panel of investors, known as “sharks.” Freschman assisted Corcoran and Daymond John, co-founder of the FUBU clothing line and another of the show’s stars, review business plans presented by contestants, his wife said.
“He loved business and was passionate about venture capital and helping startup companies,” Robin Freschman said Thursday in a telephone interview. “That was his hobby.”
“Shark Tank,” which has received four Emmy nominations, won the award last year for outstanding structured reality program.
An accountant by training, Freschman oversaw Innovation Capital’s expansion into an influential allocator of seed funding to fledgling businesses on the Eastern seaboard. He managed the firm’s two most well-known units, Innovation Ventures and the Delaware Innovation Fund, as well as the New York-based ARC Angel Fund.
“Watching the companies succeed with their new ideas and innovations is exciting,” Freschman said in a 2012 interview with Fox Business. “What is most gratifying is when you see a product or service in the marketplace and you can say, ‘I remember that company when.’”
Established in 1995, the Delaware Innovation Fund was the state’s first venture-capital firm. Freschman started the fund at the request of Delaware’s then governor, Thomas R. Carper, who is now a U.S. senator, according to FP Angels, an investor group that Freschman co-founded. Initial investments in the Delaware Innovation Fund range from $25,000 to $500,000, according to its website.
“David’s contributions will set the stage for the next generation of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business professionals,” the company said in a profile on its website.
Freschman also founded Wilmington-based Early Stage East, a forum that brings together venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to help obtain seed funding. Since it began in 1998, the conference has attracted more than 800 companies that have raised more than $1 billion in investment capital, according to its website.
In 2009, he established FashInvest, also based in Wilmington, as a forum for growing companies to discuss technology, retailing and branding in the fashion industry.
“David J. Freschman was a man who knew how to command your attention,” FashInvest said in a tribute on its website. “He was also a man who never took no for an answer, and always thought light-years before anyone else.”
Nicknamed “D.J. Fresch” by his students at LIM College’s Graduate School of Business in New York, where he was an adjunct professor since 2010, Freschman was a regular speaker at universities and conferences. He lectured on angel investing at the White House Conference on Small Business and was appointed to a three-year term on the small-business advisory council at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank in 2000.
David Jay Freschman was born on July 25, 1962, in Wilmington to Morris and Rachael Freschman. His father owned a small grocery store, Freschman said in the Fox Business interview.
He attended Brandywine High School in Wilmington before earning a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics in 1984, according to his LinkedIn.com profile. Freschman then completed a master’s in business administration from Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore in 2001.
Freschman joined accounting firm Arthur Andersen in 1984 and worked in the Philadelphia office. He soon realized that he didn’t want to audit big companies and positioned himself for recruitment into its enterprise division, dealing with high- growth, privately held businesses, he said in the Fox interview.
“It was there that I caught the ‘bug’ for working with and advising startup companies,” he said.
In 1989, he moved to McBride Shopa & Co. in Philadelphia, where he advised businesses on financial practices, mergers and acquisitions, capital structures and litigation. He remained there until January 1996, according to his LinkedIn page.
Freschman was active in the local Jewish community and helped to organize funding for a charitable mission to Cuba, scheduled for 2016, according to Rabbi Yair Robinson of Congregation Beth Emeth in Wilmington.
In addition to his wife, Freschman’s survivors include his parents and two children, Samara and Jared.