(2) Don Valentine, 1932-2019. Venture Capitalist Gave Entrepreneurs Tough Love. (written by Rolfe Winkler: "a technology reporter in the Journal's San Francisco bureau": WSJ.com)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/don ... s-at-87-11572200283
Note:
(a)
(i) Don Valentine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Valentine
(was Catholic)
(ii) Fordham University
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordham_University
(Established in 1841 and named for the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx in which its main campus is located; Jesuit-affiliated)
(b) "Mr Valentine died at his home in Woodside, Calif * * * 'Mr Valentine's approach was 'a lot more brass tacks,' recalled Jerry Yang"
(i) Woodside, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodside,_California
(a small town in San Mateo County)
(ii)
(A) Get down to Brass Tacks. The Phrase Finder, undated.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/get-down-to-brass-tacks.html
(B) tack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tack
(may refer to: Thumbtack * * * ; Tack, a type of cut nail, used in upholstery, shoe making and saddle manufacture
(c) "Mr Bushnell introduced Mr Valentine to a young Atari employee named Steve Jobs, who had an idea for a personal computer but whom other investors wouldn't back, in part because of his messy appearance."
(i) Atari
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari
(The original Atari, Inc, founded in Sunnyvale, California in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers)
(A) Keza MacDonald, IGN Presents: the History of Atari. Mar 20, 2014
https://www.ign.com/articles/201 ... he-history-of-atari
("Their [founders'] company - originally called Syzygy Co - was founded in 1971. Upon discovering that the name was already in use in California, the duo changed it to Atari, Inc in 1972. The word 'ataru' literally means “to hit a target” in Japanese and is associated with good fortune. The name came from the ancient Chinese board game Go, of which Bushnell was a fan. He essentially chose company's name from amongst its strange jargon. In that context, Atari means something closer to 'I'm about to win' - like 'check' in chess")
(B) IGN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGN
(C) Japanese-English dictionary:
* ataru 当たる(P); 中たる (v): "(5) to be selected (in a lottery, etc.); to win; (6) to be successful; to go well; to be a hit * * * (14) {baseb} (usu. as 当たっている) to be hitting well; to be on a hitting streak; (15) to feel a bite (in fishing)"
* tsugini 次に 【つぎに】 (conj): "next; then; after that"
(D) 囲碁用語「アタリ（当たり）」. 日本囲碁連盟 International GO Federation (IGF), undated
https://www.ntkr.co.jp/igoyogo/yogo_25.html
("アタリ（当たり）[:] 次に石を取りあげる状態のこと")
my translation: After you say "Atari," you then pick u[ the stones [that have been encycled].
(ii) Steve Jobs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
(1955-2011; "In 1973, Steve Wozniak designed his own version of the classic video game Pong. After finishing it, Wozniak gave the board to Jobs [age 18], who then took the game down to Atari, Inc in Los Gatos, California. Atari thought that Jobs had built it and gave him a job as a technician. Atari's cofounder Nolan Bushnell later described him as 'difficult but valuable,' pointing out that 'he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that' ")
(ii) Messy appearance?
Seung Lee, 18-Year-Old Steve Jobs' Job Application Sells for More Than $170,000. San Jose: Mercury News, Mar 17, 2018 (photo of Steve Jobs; Mar 17 is the print day and Mat 16 online date).
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018 ... r-more-than-170000/
("A one-page job application by then 18-year-old Jobs in 1973 was sold for $174,757 on Friday in Boston [auctioneer: RR Auction] * * * Going by 'Steven Jobs' [birth name] at the time, the recent college dropout [from Reed College, a private liberal art college in Portland, Oregon, where he studied for a couple of months] applied to a job with no description of what position the application was targeting. The document contained misspellings, misplaced punctuation and terse answers. Three years later, Jobs and his childhood friend Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer
The application was handwritten, without identifying what company he applied to. See Roger Fingas, Steve Jobs Job Application Sells for over $174,000 at Auction. AppleInsider, Mar 16, 2018 (photo of the application).
https://appleinsider.com/article ... r-174000-at-auction
(d) "Valentino backed Cisco, even though he had doubts about the company's co-founders. * * * When a group of company executives became fed up with one of the company's co-founder, insisting that she be fired"
Cisco Systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems#1984–1995:_Origins_and_initial_growth
("Cisco Systems was founded in December 1984 by Sandy Lerner, a director of computer facilities for the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Lerner partnered with her husband, Leonard Bosack, who was in charge of the Stanford University computer science department's computers")
---------------------------full text
In the mid 1960s, Don Valentine had a hunch that startups using silicon semiconductors, then a new technology, would thrive. After failing to persuade his employer, Fairchild Semiconductor Corp, that it should invest in some of its more promising customers, Mr Valentine decided to invest on his own.
His hobby became Sequoia Capital, which over the following five decades has built an unrivaled record of venture capital investing, betting early on Atari and Apple Inc in the 1970s, Cisco Systems Inc and Oracle Corp in the1980s, Yahoo! And Google in the 1990s, Airbnb, Inc and LinkedIn in the 2000s, and Stripe Inc and Square Inc this decade.
Mr Valentine handed the reins to a new generation of investors in 1996, but the firm still operates in his image—as a team of hard-nosed investors willing to butt heads inside company boardrooms and who relentlessly question each other and those seeking their capital.
Their founder picked up those habits in high school from Jesuits who taught him the Socratic method.
Mr Valentine died at his home in Woodside, Calif on Oct 25. He was 87 years old. He cut a distinctly different character from many of today's venture-capital investors. With rock-bottom interest rates and capital flooding Silicon Valley, many popular entrepreneurs now have their choice of whose money to take. Founders like WeWork's Adam Neumann often get huge stock packages and supervoting shares, making them fabulously rich and all-powerful inside their companies.
In the early 1970s, when an investment firm approached Mr Valentine to invest in startups, less than 50 million was available for such investments, he recalled in a 2009 interview -- adjusted for inflation, still a fraction of what is available today.
Mr Valentine's approach was 'a lot more brass tacks,' recalled Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo who later became a good friend of Mr Valentine's. 'There was less coddling of founders, less adulation: Let's just build a business, whatever it takes,' Mr Yang said.
Inside boardrooms, Mr Valentine vigorously pressed company executives to save money and maximize cash flow.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell says Mr Valentine was by far his best board member. 'We fought like cats and dogs,' recalled Mr Bushnell. 'Steel sharpens steel. Every board meeting, he would ask me a question about my company that I didn't know but I immediately knew that I should know it.'
Mr Bushnell introduced Mr Valentine to a young Atari employee named Steve Jobs, who had an idea for a personal computer but whom other investors wouldn't back, in part because of his messy appearance.
Mr Valentine said in the 2009 interview that he recalled Mr Jobs stood out as one of the 'best interrogators' he ever saw. 'Somehow or other, he knew what to focus on and how to build a sequence and series of questions that were additive to the answers.'
Mr Valentino's background as a salesman was one reason he focused on investing in promising markets over promising people. One that he felt was ripe for growth in the mid-1980s was networking equipment. so he backed Cisco, even though he had doubts about the company's co-founders.
Mr Valentine took charge at Cisco. John Morgridge, whom Mr Valentine hired as Cisco's chief executive in 1988, recalled in an interview that Mr Valentine came in as chairman at his first board meeting. Later, Mr Morgridge said, he went through old board minutes and never found a resolution actually electing Mr Valentine chairman. 'He just took the role at that point om the company's history.'
When a group of company executives became fed up with one of the company's co-founder, insisting that she be fired, they went to Mr Valentine, not to Mr Morgridge, to make their demand. 'He was the boss,' Mr Morgridge recalls.
Donald Thomas Valentine was born in 1932 in New York City. His birth certificate listed his father's place of employment as 'milk route.' His mother, a homemaker, suffered from tuberculosis, and Mr Valentine and his brother, Robert, visited her in the hospital as she recuperated in an iron lung, waving to her through a window, according to his daughter. Neither of his parents finished grade school., Mr Valentine recalled in the 2009 interview.
He was educated in Catholic schools, where nuns beat hom for writing left-handed. When it came time for college, he studied chemistry at Fordham University because it was close to home and inexpensive. 'I was one of the few people who went to school, paid their tuition quarterly in cash,' he said in the interview. 'My father did not have a checking account.'
A stint in the armed forces brought him to California, where he decided to stay because it didn't snow in February. Later, he became an avid skier, saving money buying children's lift tickets for his teenage sons. 'Both of my brothers were 12 for many years,' recalled his daughter.
Mr Valentine credited his chemistry studies with helping him to identify that semiconductors made of silicon. A new technology in the late 1950s,
Fairchild was based in what became Silicon Valley in Northern California, but Mr Valentine ran sales out of Los Angeles, where many military customers were located. It was there he met his wife, Rachel, while playing beach volleyball. They were married 58 years until Mr Valentine's death.
He is survived by his wife, three children and seven grandchildren.
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发表于 11-4-2019 17:45:16
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