Apropos of nothing, we’re kicking around names of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who’ve hit it “big” at least twice in their careers. Of course, “hit it big” is a subjective term. But who are your nominees? Add your candidates in the comments. So far, we have Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics/Netscape), Steve Jobs (Apple/Pixar), Judy Estrin (Bridge/NCD/Precept Software), Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun/Granite Systems) and Reed Hastings (Pure Atria/Netflix).
UPDATE: Lots of entries in the comments here, but in the interest of focus, we’d like to narrow this down to founders only (we probably should have said this earlier). Neither Omid Kordestani nor Ram Shriram were founders at Google or Netscape, and Guy Kawasaki wasn’t founder at Apple, and so on. Our question first arose from a conversation about how individuals themselves are very hard to bet on, as significant predictors of success. True, you need good founders to win. But they are hardly ever guarantors of $300-400 million plus mega IPO (or sale) hits. What’s surprising is how few examples there are of people who get two big hits. Thanks for the responses, and we’ll be watching for more.
16 Comments
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Anonymous said:
How about Phillipe Kahn? Borland/Starfish/LightSurf
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Cathy said:
Would be nice to see some names from the younger generation of entrepreneurs, like Mark Fletcher of Bloglines and Onelist.
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NL said:
You probably should add Healtheon/WebMD to Jim Clark’s list as well. It’s worth $2.3bn.
Maybe Donna Dubinsky (Palm/Handspring)?
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Nick Zaharias said:
here are two:
Omid Kordestani - Netscape & Google
Ram Shriram - Netscape & Google -
NG said:
Narendra Rocherolle. Sold Webshots.com to Excite@Home for $82 million in 1999, bought it back for $2 million, then sold it for $70 million to CNET in 2004. I think he hit gold twice.
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Edward Miller said:
Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce for Fairchild/Intel
There are lots of others from the Fairchild spinouts as well…
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Edward Miller said:
Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky of Palm then Handspring and now PalmOne.
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Edward Miller said:
Ray Ozzie with Lotus Notes and now Groove Networks
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Gary Silverman said:
Financially it might not have been as big, but what about Mark Fletcher. eGroups (to Yahoo) and Bloglines (to Ask Jeeves).
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Dollar said:
Jim Bidzos for RSA and Verisign
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Webb Sussman said:
How about Guy Kawasaki? Apple, several software companies in the L.A. area, Garage Technology Ventures, etc. He certainly qualifies.
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VClarkie said:
Enzo Torresi? Olivetti PC Group in the US, Businessland, Netframe, co-founder Power Computing Corp, ICast, Kerbango, and A4Vision. Now EuroFund and myQube.
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Grunt said:
How about this gentleman Kamran Elahian? http://www.kamranelahian.com He claims to have co-founded nearly half-a-dozen companies….
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Anonynous Coward said:
Steve Kirsch founded Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, and Propel.
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Webb Sussman said:
Per your response about Guy Kawasaki - he wasn’t a founder at Apple, but he has founded or help start several different companies, including After Hours Software, Garage.com, etc. He should stay on your list.
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JoeRBert said:
Josh Koppelman- Infonautics/Half.com/Turntide
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