Why Did Lightspeed Hire a 22-year-old?
I’m pleased to welcome Adam Goldberg as our newest Partner at Lightspeed. Adam will focus on enterprise infrastructure and companies powered by artificial intelligence.
No ordinary 22-year-old.
Adam skipped middle school and high school and went straight to Cal, where he studied pure mathematics. He then went to Stanford for a BS in Computer Science and work towards his Masters. (He’s clearly conflicted at the Big Game). Along the way, Adam did research at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, the University of Wisconsin, the NSA, and Stanford InfoLab. He also held development roles at Palantir and Dropbox, founded and ran the Dorm Room Fund at Stanford, and has been known to win a hackathon or two from time to time. Most recently, Adam was a product lead at data management startup Rubrik. (Fun fact: Adam’s name appears in the end credits of every episode of the last two seasons of HBO Silicon Valley as a technical consultant.)
Part of the family.
Adam was a Lightspeed Summer Fellow two years ago, when we worked closely with him as he and his team worked on getting their business idea off the ground. It was during that time that we witnessed Adam’s keen sense for both technology and markets. After graduation from Stanford, Adam joined Lightspeed portfolio company Rubrik in a lead product role.
Enterprise entrepreneurs are getting younger.
Entrepreneurs like to work with investors they can relate to. Investors like to work with entrepreneurs that can relate to them. Consumer entrepreneurs are a diverse set — whether it’s a diversity of experience, geography, gender, perspective or age. And we have all seen consumer entrepreneurs getting younger — we invested in Evan Spiegel when he was a senior at Stanford, and it’s only a matter of time before we fund the next college (or high school?) entrepreneur.
The revelation to us, however, is that enterprise entrepreneurs are also getting younger. In a sector that has traditionally valued experience alone, the accelerated pace of technology innovation has tilted the scale towards younger founders. Perhaps Aaron Levie of Box.net first blazed a trail, and we are now seeing more and more enterprise startups founded by twenty-somethings.
Adam is our not so secret weapon when it comes to relating to a younger generation of founders. And while we view his age as a secret weapon, it’s his business maturity and thoughtfulness as a leader and future investor which makes him an invaluable addition to the team.
Please join me in welcoming Adam to Lightspeed! You can reach Adam at adam [at] lsvp.com.
