Don Valentine

Don Valentine was the founder of Sequoia Capital and one of the most consequential venture capitalists in American history. A working-class Bronx kid who paid his Fordham tuition in cash, he parlayed a career in semiconductor sales at Raytheon, Fairchild, and National Semiconductor into a firm that backed Apple, Atari, Cisco, Oracle, Google, and YouTube. His contrarian philosophy - bet on markets, not founders - and his Socratic boardroom style made him one of the architects of modern Silicon Valley. He died in October 2019 at age 87, leaving behind a legacy that shaped the entire venture capital industry.