Word: valleys
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Chin is about to make partner at Information Technology Ventures, a small but rising Palo Alto VC firm. Chin handles the firm's portfolio of seven Internet companies and scours the Valley for others to fund. It's a frenetic job, but Chin crackles with rapid-fire energy. "We're going for the early-stage, high-risk, big hits," he says, piloting his midnight-blue Mercedes down I-280 on a recent Wednesday. "When I evaluate start-ups I ask, 'Is this a multibillion-dollar market? Can this be a billion-dollar company?' We want companies that can be industry...
Before going home, Chin will sit through a presentation by an online wine shop and have sushi with a man who claims to have a blockbuster e-commerce idea--he just won't tell Chin what it is. Chin will take his chances. Like every young VC in the Valley, he needs to land a big IPO score to become a real player. He's too sure of himself to admit being worried that many of the companies he backs will never make it that far. "It's a guess; it's a bank shot--you throw...
Engineers like Kaushik, 39, once regarded as the Valley's geeky proletariat, are in such high demand that many of them shrewdly migrate from one start-up to the next, pulling in six-figure salaries and collecting bushels of potentially lucrative stock options. Kaushik should be rich by now, but thanks to a string of bad luck and bad decisions, he is not. He's worked for seven high-tech companies in 10 years. His first employer was bought by another firm shortly after he was hired. He joined another company in 1992 before it went public...
Kaushik soon landed a job at Oracle, one of the Valley's blue-chip firms. Two years later, he quit to take a job at a hot start-up called CrossWorlds Software. Had he stayed at Oracle, "I would have made a lot of money. Not multimillions, but not pocket change either." Kaushik left CrossWorlds after a year--the company has yet to have its IPO--to start his own dot.com with three friends. "I thought starting my own company would complete my contribution to the world and my profession," he says. But after three months of trying to raise...
Craig Newmark is making money by accident. While everyone else in the Valley is haunted by the phantom revenues they promised their VCs, Newmark is trying to find charities to fund. A 46-year-old ex-software engineer, he runs the online bulletin board Craigslist.org and if you're anyone in Silicon Valley, you use Craig's List. While headhunters and job fairs throw tons of resumes your way, a $45 posting on Craig's List gets you the real talent. And with 180 new listings each day, the site, which gives its profits to charity...