Dave McClure has been known as one of the smartest and hardest working tech investor. He has been investing in early stage startups for years. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty years, and has worked with companies such as PayPal, Mint, Founders Fund, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Twilio, Simply Hired, O'Reilly Media, Intel, & Microsoft. Many years ago he used to do real work like coding or marketing or running conferences, but these days he mostly does useless stuff like sending lots of email, blogging, and hanging out on Facebook and Twitter.

 Now, though, we’ve confirmed that he’s launching his own venture fund, and at least some limited partners are already on board. Like Chris Sacca, who launched his own lower case capital fund last year, McClure is turning from an angel investor (who spends his own money) to a more organized venture capitalist (investing on behalf of limited partners).

 McClure won’t comment, but our sources say he’s raising at least a $10 million early stage fund that includes both an incubator for very early stage startups as well as a more traditional seed fund for larger investments. Investment sizes will range from $25,000 to $250,000, and the firm will focus on consumer Internet startups.

Some people think Dave’s one of the top early stage investors around. The incubator option could be misleading to some. He won’t touch a team unless they’ve already launched and have some indication of early growth. If the team is self motivated, he can serve as a guider to lift them up the mountain.

The fund will also plan to reserve cash for follow on investments. This brings entrepreneurs an extra guarantee that the fund can see them through at least a sizable series around of financing. And McClure is clearly going to be concentrating on startups that take design and marketing seriously, if his recent blog post is any indication. He says that if investors don’t have operational backgrounds in design, development, or marketing from proven consumer internet companies, you probably don’t want their money. And no one can deny that McClure has enough qualifications to say that, of course, because he has deep experience in all of these things.

As far as we know the fund hasn’t been named yet and doesn’t yet have a website. But it is definitely already making investments in startups. Entrepreneurs should indeed feel blessed if Dave agrees to mentor them. Dave KNOWS his stuff. Having someone like Dave on board can make a difference and he is the kind of person that can take your good company and make it a great one!