Good things seem to happen when investor Don Lucas gets involved with companies. The folks at San Mateo’s Contactual (formerly White Pajama) recently informed us that Lucas has become an investor, so we hope for their sake Lucas is the druid they need to finish removing the curse from the company. We recently wrote here about the Curse of the White Pajama.
It’s just the latest move by the Silicon Valley veteran we’d assumed had achieved enough success to permit a slowdown. Lucas started his career as a venture capitalist in 1959, and helped start National Semiconductor. Later, he was the early backer to Oracle’s Larry Ellison, helping the novice Ellison instill some internal business discipline and figure out how to run a board meeting. There’s no sign of a slowing by Lucas, though. He joined the board of a Chinese recruitment company called 51Job earlier this year, after flying out in 2002 in his personal plane to meet its CEO Rick Yan and then following the company’s progress closely — part of the 51Job story we told here. Evidently, Lucas hasn’t lost his touch. 51Job’s recent IPO recently produced what looks to be Silicon Valley’s best hit in China yet.
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