Hot Prospects: Ken Howery, Founders Fund
– The following profile is an abbreviated version of Venture Capital Journal contributor Deborah Gage’s piece for the the VCJ’s series on “Hot Prospects” within the venture capital industry. –
Ken Howery’s first office after college was in a broom closet at 3000 Sand Hill Road – and no, he wasn’t the janitor. He and his new boss, Peter Thiel, who was running hedge fund Thiel Capital International, wanted a Sand Hill Road address. Even though the broom closet was the only space available, it was still on Sand Hill, and the more prestigious part at that.
“The broom closet was maybe 10 feet wide,” Howery said. “We had a desk, and any time somebody had to go to a meeting, they had to suck in to get out the door.”
Today, Howery and Thiel still work together as co-founders of the Founders Fund, but this time each has his own office at San Francisco’s picturesque Presidio. Howery, who calls Thiel his mentor, has worked with him for a dozen years on several enterprises, the most successful of which was PayPal, which the duo co-founded with several others in 1998.
Howery was PayPal’s first CFO and figured he’d work at the company maybe six months. Instead, he helped build the company for four years, until it went public in February 2002 and was bought by eBay four months later for about $1.5 billion.
The PayPal ride more than anything else convinced Howery of the importance of operational experience. “No one from the PayPal team had payment experience; no one even had Internet experience,” he said. “It was learning as you go, and you had to learn fast because there was no room for mistakes.”
Hot Prospects: Phin Barnes, First Round Capital
– The following profile is an abbreviated version of Venture Capital Journal contributor Tom Stein’s piece for the the VCJ’s series on “Hot Prospects” within the venture capital industry. –
Phin Barnes’ first entrepreneurial endeavor did not exactly go according to plan.
In 2003, the former college basketball player co-founded ResponDesign, a developer of fitness games for consoles like the Xbox and Play Station 2. With its first game, Yourself!Fitness – which was based on Barnes’ concept of a “virtual personal trainer on a game console” – the company blazed trail for a whole new category of fitness games, including the wildly popular Wii Fit.
Barnes gained valuable experience as ResponDesign’s chief marketing officer, establishing marketing partnerships with a host of major companies, including Best Buy, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Nike, Proctor & Gamble and Sony, he says.
But by 2006, he had soured on the Portland, Ore.-based company after he and CEO Ted Spooner disagreed on direction. Jaded, Barnes left ResponDesign, which continues to operate as a private company. Today, Barnes wishes ResponDesign had raised venture capital, so he could have gotten the business advice he lacked at age 27.
The experience with ResponDesign motivated Barnes to become a VC. “It made me realize that if I had a reputable investor and the right kind of guidance, the company would have turned out completely different,” he said. “I want to help entrepreneurs avoid the same mistakes I made.”
Hot Prospects: Alex Kinnier, Khosla Ventures
– The following profile is an abbreviated version of Venture Capital Journal contributor Deborah Gage’s piece for the the VCJ’s series on “Hot Prospects” within the venture capital industry. –
At age 33, Alex Kinnier was rising quickly through the ranks at Google, but he didn’t feel fulfilled. The chemical engineer wanted to help the world with clean technologies. A phone call with popular venture capitalist Vinod Khosla that lasted several hours put him on the path to happiness.
Kinnier took a pay cut to join Khosla Ventures, but he was thrilled to be back in the cleantech arena. When he got the urge to leave to start a company, Khosla talked him into staying and becoming a venture capitalist.
“I judge people on the way they think – most people in investment react to investments, and (Kinnier) can think clearly about what’s important,” Khosla said. “Every situation is different—the risks are different, the strategy is different, so much is different. I don’t want a reaction based on experience or bias. I want someone who can think things through, and he’s really good at that.”
Kinnier’s investments include Pellion Technologies, which is working on a next-generation battery; Recapping, which is developing a high-density energy storage device; Solum, which provides data to farmers about soil nutrient levels and advises how much fertilizer to apply; Reluceo, a developer of bio-based materials; and Skybox, which is building low-cost satellites.
Kinnier considers himself lucky to be a venture capitalist. “Every single day, the smartest, most passionate people who have spent weeks or months or years preparing for this, share their greatest ideas, and no matter how dumb my question is, they can answer it,” he said. “I can’t think of anything better than to get to learn and be around people this passionate and smart.”
Hot Prospects: Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate Fund
– The following profile is an abbreviated version of Venture Capital Journal senior editor Joanna Glasner’s piece for the the VCJ’s series on “Hot Prospects” within the venture capital industry. –
Ann Miura-Ko has been in the epicenter of startup innovation since the fifth grade. That’s when the now 33-year-old partner in newly formed Floodgate Fund (formerly Maples Investments) moved to Palo Alto, California, where her father worked as a rocket scientist at nearby NASA-Ames.
After graduating from Yale, Miura-Ko followed a well-worn VC path, taking a job with consulting firm McKinsey & Co. A couple years into that job, Miura-Ko met her future mentor, Ted Dintersmith, a partner at Charles River Ventures. CRV had posted an ad for an analyst on the McKinsey job board, and Miura-Ko applied for and won the position.
Miura-Ko left Charles River for Stanford to pursue a Ph.D. in quantitative modeling of computer security, where she met Floodgate co-founder Mike Maples Jr., who had signed up as an advisor to a group of students in an entrepreneurship class where Miura-Ko was a teaching assistant.
Shortly after Maples began raising his second fund in late 2007, he got a call from Miura-Ko, who was seeking career advice. Maples asked her to join the new fund, provided she start immediately. Maples and Miura-Ko have been scouting deals together ever since. Currently, they oversee a portfolio that includes some early picks, such as Twitter and user-driven content site Digg.com, as well as new portfolio additions, such as vintage-inspired clothing site ModCloth, a deal that Miura-Ko championed last year.
Miura-Ko has set the bar very high for entrepreneurs. “What I’m looking for is what I call a ninja assassin – a creative, fearless, nimble, focused entrepreneur,” she said. “They’re the kind of person who’s taking a different path and is singularly passionate about a particular idea.”
Hot Prospects: Chi-Hua Chien, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
– The following profile is an abbreviated version of Venture Capital Journal contributor Deborah Gage’s piece for the the VCJ’s series on “Hot Prospects” within the venture capital industry. –
Chi-Hua Chien’s first experience with VC wasn’t pleasant. Nearly every morning for an entire week, at 7:00 a.m., he was summoned to a meeting with the backers of Coremetrics, who were threatening to shut down the faltering dot-com.
Coremetrics ultimately worked through its problems – just two months ago IBM said it would buy the company. And Chien’s performance during the company’s troubled period was not lost on Peter Fenton, then a partner of Accel Partners, one of Coremetrics’ backers.
“Chien’s most distinctive quality is his tireless optimism,” said Fenton, now a partner at Benchmark Capital. “He has absolutely zero cynicism, and that’s part of what you have to have in venture – a true belief in entrepreneurs and their ability to change the world.”
It wasn’t long before Chien caught the attention of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which offered to make him a partner and give him a key role in its iFund, which focuses on developers of apps for Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad.
Chien is happy to back companies with amazing growth potential but aren’t necessarily out to save the world – just make it more fun. He invested in Booyah, a company started by his college roommate, Keith Lee. Booyah uses a mobile game called MyTown to marry the physical and digital worlds.
Chien believes someday the entire world will be marked up and digitized, so you’ll be able to stand in one spot with your smart phone and rewind through time to see everything that happened there. All that data will be organized and made useful, he said, and that, in turn, should provide plenty of opportunities for sharp VCs.
Hot prospects: Top 10 VCs under 36
– Lawrence Aragon is the Editor-in-Chief of Thomson Reuters publication the Venture Capital Journal and compiled this list with the help of his VCJ staff of editors and contributors. –
Let me introduce you to 10 young venture capitalists who are poised to do great things. All of our “Hot Prospects” are 35 years old or younger and all have yet to make their mark in VC.
While you may not be familiar with Chi-Hua Chien, 32, of Kleiner Perkins, Phin Barnes, 34, of First Round, Alex Kinnier, 33, of Khosla Ventures, Ken Howery, 34, of Founders Fund or Ann Miura-Ko, 33, of Floodgate, we’re sure you will be in the next several years.
Read the profiles by clicking on the pictures below.
In compiling our list of “Hot Prospects,” we didn’t have hard data to crunch. Our picks haven’t been in the business long enough to have had a major exit. So we looked at a variety of other factors that suggest future success, such as praise from experienced VCs, founding or helping to build a stellar company, successful angel investments, rapid promotion to partner, early investments in promising private companies, technical wizardry, and overcoming a major challenge.
Venture Capital is all about assessing early stage companies, and making a business decision. The ONLY people which have credibility are those who have ACTUAL hands-on experience at this stage in a broad range of industries. Earning an MBA studying theoretical business cases barely relates to the far most complex and fast moving REAL world. Don’t confuse a 30-34 year old’s “paper credentials” with expertise. Not one of them is experienced enough (at this stage) to be credible decision makers.
