Silicon Valley Nation
Silicon Valley Nation: Venture capital pioneer Paul Wythes dies
Brian Fuller
11/7/2012 10:42 AM EST
SAN FRANCISCO--During the 1960s, Paul Wythes used to steer his big blue
Pontiac around the Santa Clara Valley's orchards looking for
business signs that had the word "technology" on them.
When he saw the word, he'd stop his car, "go in and say to the lady in the lobby, 'I’m so-and-so from Sutter Hill, here’s my card, and I’d like to meet the CEO.' And eight or nine out of 10 times, the CEO would come out and he’d say, 'Hi, who are you?' And I’d tell him, and I’d ask if he had fifteen minutes ... The smart CEOs always spent the time with you because they were smart to realize that some day they may need venture capital."
Those were the early days of venture capital in what would become the Silicon Valley, just a handful of years after the 1958 enactment of the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Act would transform company investment from the rarefied piggy banks of Rockefellers, Whitneys and other well-heeled families to groups of business people in venture capital partnerships.
Paul Wythes, one of the valley's pioneering venture capitalists, died Oct. 30 at Stanford University Hospital and Clinics. He was 79.
He founded Sutter Hill Ventures in 1964, and he and his colleagues were instrumental in helping build companies such as Linear Technology, Apollo Computer, Qume, LSI Logic, Telllabs and Applied Materials. In addition, Wythes helped co-found the National Venture Capital Association.
Raised in Camden, N.J., Wythes got a mechanical engineering degree from Princeton, although he often said he should have pursued an EE. In a 2006 interview as part of an venture capital industry oral history project, Wythes said:
When he saw the word, he'd stop his car, "go in and say to the lady in the lobby, 'I’m so-and-so from Sutter Hill, here’s my card, and I’d like to meet the CEO.' And eight or nine out of 10 times, the CEO would come out and he’d say, 'Hi, who are you?' And I’d tell him, and I’d ask if he had fifteen minutes ... The smart CEOs always spent the time with you because they were smart to realize that some day they may need venture capital."
Those were the early days of venture capital in what would become the Silicon Valley, just a handful of years after the 1958 enactment of the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Act would transform company investment from the rarefied piggy banks of Rockefellers, Whitneys and other well-heeled families to groups of business people in venture capital partnerships.
Paul Wythes, one of the valley's pioneering venture capitalists, died Oct. 30 at Stanford University Hospital and Clinics. He was 79.
He founded Sutter Hill Ventures in 1964, and he and his colleagues were instrumental in helping build companies such as Linear Technology, Apollo Computer, Qume, LSI Logic, Telllabs and Applied Materials. In addition, Wythes helped co-found the National Venture Capital Association.
Raised in Camden, N.J., Wythes got a mechanical engineering degree from Princeton, although he often said he should have pursued an EE. In a 2006 interview as part of an venture capital industry oral history project, Wythes said:
"I liked electrical engineering, but I committed to mechanical and I stayed with it. That was not a disaster at all, but around here it is more electronics than it is engines."
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