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A dictionary hidden in his desk
Doug Leone and Michael Moritz both ran Sequoia, a gregarious, tactical Italian and a cold-blooded, strategic Brit. They had no business being partners, and they made it work for twenty-five years.
In partners meetings, Moritz would use a word that the whole sentence depended on. Leone kept a little black dictionary in his desk, and when one of those words came up, he faked a trip to the bathroom, looked the word up, and came back.
Moritz also wrote internal memos and reports to the limited partners that were funny as heck. Each partner was painful for the other, and making it work is a badge of honor for Leone.
How did a journalist become a venture investor?
Michael Moritz was a reporter at Time magazine in San Francisco and wrote The Little Kingdom, a 1984 book about Apple. He joined Sequoia in 1986. He later led the firm's investments in Yahoo, Google, and PayPal.
Why do opposite partners often work well together?
Partners with different strengths cover each other's blind spots, and the differences can improve decisions. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger ran Berkshire Hathaway together for decades with distinct temperaments. Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939 with complementary skills in engineering and management.
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