I've met Mike several times over the years and can say that when he starts talking, smart people start listening, kind of an EF Hutton of modern times (see this thirty-second 1980s advertisement to get the reference).
The article begins:
One of the world's pre-eminent venture capitalists, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, has picked winners like Flextronics, Cisco Systems, Yahoo, PayPal and Google by focusing on small teams or individuals that on first glance might appear to be unfundable. In a rare interview, Moritz spoke with the Mercury News about one of his latest long-shots, a call-center company founded in India, how he picks companies to back, and the silver lining in the financial meltdown. Following is an edited transcript.
Q: How has the financial crisis reshaped the economy and affected the way you pick winners?
Hopefully that tempts you enough to go read the whole article. If not, here's my favorite excerpt on one of my favorite topics, revisionism:
When we help organize one of these companies at the beginning, it never looks like the world's greatest idea. I think it's the marketing and PR department that rewrites history and tells you that it was always the world's greatest idea. What they don't say is that at the very beginning there was great uncertainty and a great lack of clarity. It was murky and confused and messy circumstances. I can't think of any investment that we made in a startup company or with just a few people where things didn't get worse before they got better.
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