I heard this interview with Michael Moritz, the Sequoia Capital venture capitalist, on Radio 4 the other day. It’s well worth 30 minutes of your time. Moritz talks about his journey from childhood in Wales, history degree at Oxford, journalist for Time magazine and on to Sequoia where he has invested in, among other companies, Google, Apple, Yahoo!, PayPal and Cisco.
Here’s an excerpt (apologies for the ropey and inaccurate transcript):
Peter Day: Many investors throw their money at lots of investment targets, hope that two or three will be survivors and that one will be a superstar success.
Michael Moritz: That isn’t how things are done at Sequoia. It’s not the way you think of it. Every single time you write a cheque you expect, or pray, depending on your inclination, for that investment to succeed.
You can hear the interview as .ram streaming audio, or a downloadable mp3 (note the interview doesn’t start until about a minute in). The Radio 4 web page is here.