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A history lesson with Tom McMurray · Collab Fund

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From 1990-1998 Tom was a general partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the leading venture capital firms in the world. Recently, we caught up about how he broke into the venture world and what he thinks makes a good investor. Below is a snippet of our Q&A. How did you first get into venture capital? I was on the faculty of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke when I met Steve Blank at an aerospace conference. Steve hired me to work for Ardent Computer where he was a co-founder and VP Marketing. At Ardent, I usually ended up presenting to the Board and VC investors. I started reviewing a few business plans for the VC’s and decided I liked the work. At that time my total work experience was a PhD in fluid dynamics doing fighter jet computer simulations. I had no idea what a balance sheet was then but I started studying on my own to learn. Steve taught me a lot about the Valley and the startup business. It was a wild time back then. How did you end up at Sequoia Capital? I was hired into

A history lesson with Tom McMurray Sep 1, 2015 SHARE ↓ by Collaborative Team @collabfund Copy Link From 1990-1998 Tom was a general partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the leading venture capital firms in the world. Recently, we caught up about how he broke into the venture world and what he thinks makes a good investor. Below is a snippet of our Q&A. How did you first get into venture capital? I was on the faculty of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke when I met Steve Blank at an aerospace conference. Steve hired me to work for Ardent Computer where he was a co-founder and VP Marketi

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