Word: doerr
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Karl Rove, his chief strategist, who masterminded Bush's presidential run and was there that day. Even as Bush talked, he was working the crowd with his eyes, and couldn't help noticing one guy in particular whose head was bearing down on a note card. It was John Doerr, founder of TechNet, the new pipeline to Washington for high-tech California political money. Doerr was a Gore man, but he was taking down W.'s lengthy riff on education because he was impressed with it and realized that this guy could be a competitor for the hearts and dollars...
...Doerr is a man whose ear thousands of start-up entrepreneurs vie for, yet he spends a few hours each week seeking to improve public education. "The one thing we know about this new economy," he says, "is that if you can't do algebra, if you can't do symbolic reasoning, you are going to get left behind forever...
...criticizes the nonprofit "industry" as being too fragmented, with only 28% of the 600,000 U.S. charitable organizations having budgets of more than $500,000. By Doerr's reasoning, too much money is being spent on overhead, with too little going to the intended beneficiaries. He would like to see some rugged capitalism applied to weed out inefficient organizations so that more money would flow to those that are really maximizing their results--say, by improving math scores...
...Atkinson gets to the meat of his pitch--pricing, revenue assumptions and sustainability--Doerr asks, "How will we, or a third party, measure how this works?" Soon there is a fusillade of questions. Can you judge the teacher's work by the students' progress? How do you get the bandwidth to make this a high-quality experience, say, with lessons on video? If teachers are accessing the site from home, won't that tie up their phone lines...
With the TeachScape crew gone, the partners mull the firm's prospects. Is this really where they want to put their millions? Or are other philanthropic start-ups more deserving, better prepared, addressing a more urgent need? Doerr and the others decide to study TeachScape further with a view eventually to providing some funding. They break for coffee. And wait for the next pitch...