If we expand beyond VCs, the prototypical example is "Colonel" Harland Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken. > But by not knowing that Harland David Sanders was

If we expand beyond VCs, the prototypical example is "Colonel" Harland Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken. > But by not knowing that Harland David Sanders was an actual man, who lived an actual life, people miss out on more than they might imagine. For one thing, the Colonel wasn't just a fast-food baron who represented his company on TV, the way Dave Thomas (a Sanders protégé) later did. Sanders was the living embodiment of what his food supposedly stood for. His white suit wasn't the invention of a marketing committee; he wore it every day and was never seen in public for the last 20 years of his life in anything else. (He had a heavy wool one for winter and a lighter cotton one for summer.) He was a failure who got fired from a dozen jobs before starting his restaurant, and then failed at that when he went out of business and found himself broke at the age of 65. He drove around in a Cadillac with his face painted on the side before anybody knew who he was, pleading with the owners of run-down diners to use his recipe and give him a nickel commission on each chicken. He slept in the back of the car and made handshake deals. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2019218,00.html http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2019218,00.html