Jeff Nolan, most vocal Silicon Valley VC blogger, leaves business

You could make a very good case that Jeff Nolan is the valley’s most vocal and prolific venture capitalist blogger.

He has been blogging for more than two years, and we have read his stuff religiously. His blunt language caused him endless problems internally, which we found out when we talked with SAP’s PR people. Apparently, SAP even had their lawyers call him to shut the blog down. But he kept at it. In fact, he was one of Matt’s inspirations for starting this SiliconBeat blog — the other inspiration being, of course, Dan Gillmor, a former…

colleague and super-blogger. But now Nolan is departing the VC business, and here is his post about why:

I missed having direct operational control and I missed the sense of accomplishment that comes from successfully executing direct operational control, and quite honestly, all of the venture deals I was looking at started to look the same. I missed having a team. I was also concerned that my experience in operating roles in enterprise software was becoming dated and perhaps not as relevant to the state that the business is in today; it’s one thing to spend 4 hours in a board meeting talking about a business, it’s another thing altogether to actually do it.

Fortunately, it looks like he’ll keep delivering witty insights, even if they take on a different focus. He remains with SAP. He will be leading the strategy team for the “Kill Oracle” group, also known as Apollo. His “gang” will be spread from Boston, to New York, to Newtown Square (PA) and Palo Alto and be responsible for “non-linear disruptive tactics” in the war with Oracle.