What I Learned From Silicon Valley Legends
This year, more so than any other prior year, I have come to appreciate Silicon Valley not only as a unique place for technology, innovation and business success stories, but as a special community of people who value making a contribution to the world and the people around them.
Earlier this month, we had the great honor of hosting the 2015 GSV Hall of Fame Celebration at the Pioneer Summit (highlights) with four individuals — Bill Campbell, Diane Greene, Dick Kramlich, and Larry Sonsini — who have made a lifetime contribution to Silicon Valley and changed the world for good. We also honored Mike Homer posthumously. We were all excited to watch the video tribute that so many of Silicon Valley’s leaders, including Omid Kordestani, Scott Cook, Bill Gurley, Jennifer Bailey, Ben Horowitz, contributed to.
What do the Hall of Fame inductees all have in common?
Well what I realized was that these people weren’t outstanding based on their skills and abilities — there are many intelligent and hardworking people in the world. The thing that I realized that separated the Hall of Famers was that they all had strong values and were respected more for their humanity than just their abilities.
I chose to highlight a few of the qualities we heard about these individuals while filming their tribute videos and within the Silicon Valley community. While I highlight a particular quality about each inductee, these are by no means comprehensive.
1. Loyalty — many of Larry’s colleagues and clients have decided to work with him for years and in some cases decades because of his strong loyalty. Even as his client list expanded to some of the largest companies around the world, Larry maintained relationships with his earliest clients and friends. The titans of the technology world again and again seek out Larry for advice on their most important corporate challenges.
“Larry Sonsini has played a role in building and advising some of the most successful companies in existence today,” said Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla Motors, “His guidance will be invaluable as Tesla Motors drives forward the electric transport revolution and grows to become one of the great car companies of the 21st century.”
2. Kindness — people know Bill as a key driving force in building Intuit from a startup to the largest publicly list financial technology company and as a confidant for Steve Jobs since his return to Apple in 1997 as they took the company from near bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world. What people might not know about Bill, if you haven’t met him, is his incredible kindness to everyone he meets. He has mentored and helped countless entrepreneurs and others in Silicon Valley, Columbia University (where he chaired the Board of Trustees), and his hometown of Homestead, PA. Bill doesn’t care if you are the CEO of a huge company or working an entry level job, as long as you are passionate and genuine about helping the world and your community, Bill will be there to offer his guidance and support.
3. Persistence — in his career, Dick has invested in ten companies that have grown from startup stage to over $1 billion in market value. He is not only persistently looking for great entrepreneurs to partner with, he has steadfast belief in the companies he backs and works with them for many years through good times and tough times to try to achieve important business and societal outcomes.
4. Courage — Mike was one of the first people to join Netscape that brought to the world the Internet era. They had to compete with Microsoft which was the dominate technology company at the time and Mike was a constant source of creativity and energy for the entire time. Many of Mike’s protégés said in their video tributes that whenever they face a difficult challenge they would ask themselves “what would Mike Homer do in this situation?”
“We all live in a better world today thanks to the efforts of those who fought the original browser wars. Technology history records many of them: Marc Andreessen, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jim Barksdale to name a few, but people who were there will tell you there was none more important or impactful than the late great Mike Homer.”
— Ben Horowitz, Co-Founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz in “Why the Browser Matters.”
5. Humility — Diane co-founded VMware and was its first CEO leading it to a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Importantly, she took virtualization from a theoretical concept and built a large company out of it while competing with giant corporations in enterprise computing. Diane is humble and prefers to give credit to her team and personally stay out of the spotlight. She continues to bring high expectations and fresh thinking to Intuit, Google, Khan Academy, and MIT where she is a board member.
“Diane is a special person who combines a sharp business acumen with a brilliant technical mind,” said Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. “We know she will be a great contributor and we are grateful to have her insight.”
What unites all of them beside their individual values is the collective effort to give as much of themselves back to the community that supported their personal achievements. All of the inductees spends an enormous amount of their time now serving the next generation of companies, educational and philanthropic organizations, and people in the Silicon Valley community. They openly give their time to mentor people from establish CEOs to students who are still exploring the world. What makes the Hall of Fame inductees unique is not their ability, but rather their humanity. Their efforts along with many other important leaders is what makes Silicon Valley a unique community to work and live in.
— Li Jiang @gsvpioneer
Note 1: A big THANK YOU to all the wonderful people who contributed to the Hall of Fame video (listed alphabetically by last name):
Shellye Archambeau, CEO, MetricStream | Board Director, Verizon + Nordstrom
Jennifer Bailey, VP, Internet Services, Head of Apple Pay, Apple
Mark Bertelsen, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati
Steve Bochner, Partner + former CEO, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati
Todd Bradley, Board Director, TrueCar | former EVP, HP
Edouard Bugnion, Co-Founder, VMware
Scott Cook, Founder + Chairman of Executive Committee, Intuit
Donna Dubinsky, Co-Founder + CEO, Numenta | Co-Founder, Handspring + Palm
Bill Gurley, General Partner, Benchmark Capital
Ben Horowitz, Co-Founder + General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
Justin Kitch, Co-Founder + CEO, curious.com
Omid Kordestani, Chairman, Twitter | former Senior Advisor + Chief Business Officer, Alphabet (Google)
Scott Kriens, Chairman + former CEO, Juniper Networks
Sandy Kurtzig, Co-Founder + CEO, Kenandy | Founder + former CEO, ASK Group
Mark Perry, Former General Partner, New Enterprise Associates
Donna Petkanics, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati
Jason Rosenthal, CEO, Lytro
Scott Sandell, Managing General Partner, New Enterprise Associates
Danny Shader, Founder + CEO, PayNearMe
Pradeep Sindhu, Founder + CTO + Vice Chairman, Juniper Networks
Brad Smith, CEO, Intuit
Pete Sonsini, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates
Carlos Watson, Co-Founder + CEO, Ozy Media
Note 2: The longer form bios of the 2015 GSV Hall of Famers:
Bill Campbell
A native of Homestead, Pennsylvania, Bill Campbell got his leadership training on the gridiron as captain of Columbia’s 1961 Ivy League Championship team. His success on the field led to coaching at Boston College and Columbia — -where he later chaired the Board of Trustees. After stints at J. Walter Thompson and Kodak, he was hired by Apple. He then ran Claris, Go Corp, and Intuit, and has chaired the Board at Intuit and served on Apple’s Board for 17 years. Bill has been a key advisor to the founders and CEOs of Amazon, Google, Twitter, and countless Silicon Valley companies. In 2009, the National Football Foundation named the William V. Campbell Trophy in Bill’s honor. The trophy is awarded annually to college football’s most outstanding player recognizing academic success, football performance and exemplary community leadership. In his spare time, Bill coaches 8th grade football at Sacred Heart School.
Diane Greene
Born in Rochester, New York, Diane Greene graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Vermont, and earned a master’s degree in Naval Architecture from MIT in 1978. In 1988 she earned a second master’s in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. She was the Technical Lead at Sybase and SGI, and CEO of VXtreme. In 1998, Diane was Cofounder, President and CEO of VMware, one of the largest virtualization companies in the world. VMware was later acquired by EMC Corporation. Diane serves on the Board of Directors of Intuit and Google, and the Advisory Board to to MIT’s and Berkeley’s Engineering Departments, offering 3 decades of experience as an entrepreneur, technological innovator, and corporate executive.
Dick Kramlich
Dick Kramlich, a graduate of Northwestern and Harvard Business School, began his career in finance and investment management in Boston. In 1969, he began his journey in venture capital as a General Partner with Arthur Rock and Co. In 1978 Dick co-founded NEA. Since then, he has been involved in ten companies that have grown from near start-up stage to companies with market value in excess of $1 billion. Under Dick’s leadership covering 35 years, NEA has invested over $14 billion and had 500 liquidity events, and today is widely recognized as one of the world’s premier venture firms. Dick and his wife, Pamela, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2006. They are noted collectors of Media Art and founded the New Art Trust to foster best practices in the field.
Larry Sonsini
A native of Los Angeles, Larry Sonsini earned an undergraduate and legal degree from UC Berkeley. Following graduation, Larry joined McCloskey, Wilson, Mosher & Martin in Palo Alto in 1966 and the firm was later renamed Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati. Since its launch, the firm has concentrated on the representation of emerging technology companies and venture capitalists. Larry has advised multiple generations of Silicon Valley companies from Cypress Semiconductors to Apple, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Seagate, Google, Netscape, YouTube and many more. He has served as a trusted advisor to many of the key figures in Silicon Valley history, including Steve Jobs and the principals of Google and Hewlett-Packard. During the past 35 years under Larry’s leadership, the firm has grown to over 725 lawyers and 14 offices representing over 300 public companies and over 3,000 private companies. In addition to his duties at the firm, Larry served as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange’s Commission on Corporate Governance, a trustee at UC Berkeley and Santa Clara University, and has taught at Stanford Law School and at Berkeley School of Law.
Mike Homer
Mike was born and raised in San Francisco and was a proud graduate of UC Berkeley. A Silicon Valley presence for nearly thirty years, Mike launched his career at Apple, excelling as both a technical innovator and savvy marketer. He held executive positions at GO and EO, before making an indelible mark on the success of Internet pioneer Netscape. Mike was a board member at Opsware and Palm, and an investor and advisor to Tellme Networks, Tivo and Google. He started Kontiki and Open Media Network. Mentoring was a way of life for Mike and he took great pleasure in sharing his expertise with others. His larger than life personality and genuine warmth will be profoundly missed by all whose lives he touched, and his legacy is reflected in part by their collective accomplishments.
