Daniel Hoffer

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Daniel Hoffer is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-founded CouchSurfing and later became its CEO. He is now the co-founder and managing partner of Deep Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund. Before that role, he was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Hayden AI, a Series C startup backed by TPG.

Hoffer grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, and started his first dot-com at 15. Since 1990 he has been active in Internet communities. In high school he ran an online bulletin board system and led an education program linking physically challenged students with peers online.

He earned an AB in Philosophy from Harvard and an MBA from Columbia. He co-founded Fuxito Worldwide, a soccer website, in 1999 and hired Casey Fenton and Sebastien Letuan; he appeared on the cover of Inc. Magazine in January 2000.

His early career included roles as a strategist at NEC, sales at Siebel Systems, and product management at Symantec. He later led product for TripIt and ExpenseIt at Concur before SAP acquired it.

CouchSurfing began in 2003 as a nonprofit founded by Hoffer, Letuan, and Fenton. Hoffer was COO during the nonprofit phase and served as Chairman of the Board. When CouchSurfing's 501(c)(3) status was denied in 2010, he became CEO and steered the company toward profitability and venture funding. CouchSurfing raised $7.6 million in a 2011 Series A and $15 million in a 2012 Series B.

In 2015 Hoffer became a partner at Tandem Capital, a seed fund in Silicon Valley, and in 2018 he joined Speedinvest as a part-time general partner. He later became a managing director at Autotech Ventures, backing mobility startups such as SWVL, BusUp, and Bus.com, earning the nickname “The Bus King.” He left Autotech in 2023 to join Hayden AI full-time.

Hoffer has made numerous angel investments, including Beanworks, Branch, Firefly, Fishbowl, Grove Collaborative, LoungeBuddy, Outdoorsy, and Trucklabs, and participated in SpotHero’s 2017 round and Preply’s 2020 round. He has lectured at top business schools and written for Forbes and TechCrunch. He is a licensed martial arts instructor and lives in Menlo Park, California.