I’m pretty sure Jim Breyer didn’t go to Davos in the pre-2000 period. The one VC who did attend is a relatively low profile Accel partner, Joe Schoendorf. He had the good fortune to sit next to Klaus Schwab on a flight to Hong Kong at some point in the middish ’90s. That was Klaus’ “discovery” of venture capital, and Joe became his go-to source. Schoendorf is now on the Foundation board of the World Economic Forum and is easily the most obscure member of what has become a gallery of the good and the great.

Before the go-go days of the late ’90s, the WEF very much tried to discourage the private party scene from getting out of hand. When I first became involved, with the 1993 Davos, there were strong voices in the Forum that wanted to ban them completely. I’d credit Hubert Burda with breaking the barriers with his grand parties at the Belvedere. After that, as you recount, all hell broke loose in terms of ostentation.

I also wouldn’t discount the influence of Eric Schmidt on guiding Google’s Davos presence. When Schmidt was at Sun Microsystems (before he went to Novell), he had a close view of its Davos machinations. Sun had the then-brilliant idea of renting the chalet directly across the street from the Kongresszentrum for its private meetings and entertaining.