Don Valentine: The Original Hard Tech Solo GP?
What's old is new again!
Was Don Valentine, the founder of Sequoia, the first “Operator Angel turned Hard Tech Solo GP?”
From Eli Levi’s deep dive on Sequoia Capital’s origins in the Yeshiva University Observer:
"After working in California for a bit, Valentine was recruited by Fairchild Semiconductor and was soon promoted to head of sales and marketing...
...As Valentine was selling the semiconductors at Fairchild he began to make small investments in the companies to whom he was selling the semiconductors...
...Valentine also personally knew the network of people creating and developing the latest semiconductors working at Fairchild....
...For the aforementioned reasons, Capital Group recruited Valentine to make investments based on his unique insight. Valentine accepted and Capital Group gave him a five million dollar fund entitled, Sequoia.
This was a pretty risky move by Capital Group as five million dollars is a lot of money to give to one person to invest in a nonexistent industry...
...The main investments in the early years of Sequoia centered on the hardware of the future. The hardware world was what Valentine was familiar with and that is where he put his investor’s money.
"