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John, my boss, was king of kingmakers when I joined. He had some early, very big hits: Genentech, Intuit, Amazon. He was one of the first to invest in the internet, with Netscape, and cemented his online reputation later with Google. Several companies already had competing search engines, but John …

AS SILICON VALLEY denizens know but others might not: Venture capital is the cash engine that fuels the tech industry. Venture capital firms raise money from rich individuals, wealthy families, universities, foundations, pension funds, funds-of-funds, government investment arms, and others. The mon…

It was almost as if someone had copied my resume verbatim. It was so specific and unconventional, and it matched my unusual background entirely. It was nice to see the choices I made validated in that one job spec - even if my decisions had been more opportunistic than strategic. [...]

[...] Spending time with open, optimistic people reminded me that it might be possible to fix some of what was broken in our country - particularly the deep divisions between the rich and poor and between those at the center at those at the margins. I felt renewed and excited. I remembered why I lo…

My former boss—one of the idolized leaders in the field, and in many other respects considered one of the good guys—once gave a speech to the National Venture Capital Association in which he described his ideal tech founders as “white, male, nerds who’ve dropped out of Harvard or Stanford—and they …