10 posts and columns on Mike Moritz

Andreessen Horowitz Partners Pledge Half Their VC Income to Philanthropy

in News on April 25 at 1:45 pm PT

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz say they want to improve venture capital’s image by committing to philanthropy.
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Q: Why No Twitter Board Seat for Kleiner's John Doerr? A: His Google Board Seat (Plus, Is the Star VC Looking at Spotify and Groupon Next?)

in News on December 16, 2010 at 5:14 am PT

Star venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins paid $150 million for a stake in Twitter and all he didn’t get was a board seat. That’s due to another directorship he has at search giant Google. Maybe Doerr will get one at Spotify or Groupon, where he could be investing next.

Irrational Exuberance?

in News on April 8, 2009 at 9:43 am PT

They say “flat is the new up” and that certainly seems to be the case with the venture capital industry. Though we’ve had two consecutive quarters without an IPO and the venture market is all but frozen, VC optimism is beginning to return. The latest Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index shows a small but noteworthy uptick in the VC community’s views of the entrepreneurial environment in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Would You Like Your Calls Forwarded to the Under-The-Desk Line, Mr. Moritz?

in News on December 18, 2008 at 5:39 am PT

Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz once argued that “the best time to invest is when people are cowering under their desks.” A pithy little adage, and one that was understood to be emblematic of the healthy optimism and patient money of the venture capital industry and its indefatigable all-trees-grow-to-heaven worldview. It loses a bit of its luster, though, when that healthy optimism and patient money are themselves cowering under the desk.

Silicon Valley Leaders Say No to Proposition 8 With New Group and Ad

in News on October 30, 2008 at 9:19 am PT

Today, a panoply of prominent tech and Internet leaders is taking a very public stand against a controversial initiative before California voters, which would eliminate the current legal right of same-sex couples to marry. Silicon Valley has had a long history of supporting gay rights. And recently, Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin has made a strong statement opposing Proposition 8, while Apple gave $100,000 to the help defeat it.

Kara Visits Web 2.0 Summit: Day 1

in News on October 18, 2007 at 9:20 am PT

Here’s some video from the halls of Web 2.0 Summit, which is taking place this week in San Francisco. As you will see, it is quite the Bubblefest, with all sorts of geeky bonhomie and aspiring hopefulness of also landing a $15 billion valuation, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg noted he was about to do [...]

Kara Visits Sequoia's Roelof Botha

in News on July 9, 2007 at 4:03 am PT

I first ran into Sequoia venture capitalist Roelof Botha in the green room of our recent D5 conference, where he was there to see the demo being done by Jason Calacanis for Mahalo, a “human-powered” search service that Botha had recently invested in. Though I jokingly congratulated Calacanis on the investment from a “toddler VC,” because of the 33-year-old Botha’s freshly-scrubbed and youthful looks, I’d be pretty pleased if my two sons–2 and 5 years old–could be involved in a multibillion deal after only a few years on the job.

Last Words on SDForum Event

in News on June 21, 2007 at 4:03 pm PT

In my first post about the SDForum’s annual Visionary Awards, I forgot to add a few things that were interesting to me, including a short snippet of video I forgot to put in the first one, which appears after the jump. First, Heidi Roizen–at whose luxe house in Atherton, Calif., the event took place–was also [...]

Some Vision for Silicon Valley

in News on June 21, 2007 at 7:57 am PT

Last night, party animal that I am, I also went to the SDForum‘s 10th Annual Visionary Awards, which was held at the house of well-known venture capitalist Heidi Roizen in Atherton, Calif. The not-for-profit group for-profit gave out its yearly awards to four tech figures, including The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg, [...]