Another Way: Building Companies That Last…and Last…and Last.
- United States, Ascent Audio, @ 2025.
Dave Whorton was John Doerr's associate partner at high-flying Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers during Silicon Valley's big shift. After Netscape's IPO, he witnessed the VC industry pivot from a proven forty-year playbook of managing risk to something much more aggressive: Get big fast. Don't worry about profitability. Cash out and find another venture.
And for a while, Whorton took part in this whirlwind as he pursued his dream of becoming the next Hewlett or Packard. It wasn't long, though, before it all got to be too much. Whorton recognized that if "get big fast" was the formula for building a great technology company in the twenty-first century, he was happy to let someone else do it. It just wasn't for him.