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I mourn the days when it was nearly impossible to succeed in VC before first excelling as an operator.

• 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
  I'm not sure when those days were. Maybe the 1980s? In the 1990s VC firms I interacted with were made up of partners whose background was non-tech and associates who were freshly minted MBAs. (Who had lots of opinions about what we should be doing which seemed to be totally buzzword driven.)
  • CurtMonash 10y ago
    Certainly not the 1980s. John Doerr was rising then, and his operational background isn't much. Art Patterson at Accel was a big early hitter in software, and he'd never operated much. Hummer Winblad was one of the more successful startup VC in the 1980s, because of their software focus; Ann Winblad had started a company (and sold it pretty quickly), but John Hummer went straight from his sports career into the finance sector. Even before the ones I named, Don Lucas was first guy in at Oracle; I don't think he operated much. Ditto Jacqui Morby and Henry McCance in Boston. And Ben Rosen was a stock analyst, who trained the guy who trained me. He was one of the best VC of all, although he didn't bother doing it for long.
• goseeastarwar 10y ago
  Since the 50's, VC has been a blend of operators and finance people.
• mpenn 10y ago
  My anecdotal evidence is that VC is more a "operator turned VC" now than ever before. VC used to be all MBAs / finance types (e.g., head of tech research at an investment bank). But every year, it is harder and harder to become a VC partner without significant operating experience. I am not sure who has hard stats on this though.