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 h

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.