

Silicon Valley's Hottest VC Is a Rug Dealer - esalazar
http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2012/03/21/silicon-valleys-hottest-vc-is-a-rug-dealer/?feed=rss_home

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rdl
I had no idea the carpet stores in downtown Palo Alto ever sold actual
carpets; I've never seen anyone in any of them. I guess when you sell a
product which appreciates with time (like wine) and where each item is both
high margin and high price, they don't need a lot of traffic -- plus the
"showing at your home" thing.

(I picked up a bunch of nice Qom and Afghani carpets when I was in
Afghanistan. Kind of amazing to get 80-100 year old wool carpets in such good
condition. I'm more in the $100-500 range vs. the $5-20k US retail price
range. The thing I really want is an Afghan fortress door turned into a
conference table -- one of the stores in downtown Kabul has a branch in Los
Angeles run by the guy's brother, so it didn't seem worth trying to arrange
shipment myself.)

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joshu
There is an absurd number of them. It used to feel like a quarter of al the
stores on University were selling rugs.

I just assume that stores I can't explain are fronts for something.

I used to work in Times Square and always wondered about the absurdly
expensive gadget stores around...

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cperciva
A few years ago I was in Montreal and commented on the presence of what seemed
like an extraordinarily large number of stores selling Persian rugs. I was
told -- completely sincerely, as far as I could tell -- that they were fronts
for drug smuggling, since the rugs were bulky enough to hide things in and
expensive enough that customs agents wouldn't start slicing them open on the
basis of drug dogs alone.

I'm still not sure if there was any truth to that story or if it was just
xenophobia speaking.

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philwelch
Pioneer Square in Seattle is also littered with an irrational number of carpet
stores. It seems like a widespread oddity, whatever the cause.

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joshu
That article makes me feel like there is a parallel Silicon Valley that I
haven't seen into. I don't think I am a coinvestor on a single deal with them.

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itmag
Like some kind of Bizarro Valley where shady rug deals finance hot new tech
startups? I'd watch that movie.

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creamyhorror
At first glance I thought the headline said,

"Silicon Valley's Hottest VC Is a Drug Dealer"

Would have made for a nice twist.

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bipolarla
I actually called his office last week trying to speak with him. Some of the
best venture capitalists took my calls to give some great suggestions and
feedback. One was an original investor in WebMD and another was a very big in
the venture world. I even had a discussion with Alan Patricof's office since
Alan's son and I were friends since childhood. I used to hang out at their
house before Bill Clinton did. I also lived across from another rug dealer who
did pretty well. His name was Tom Freston and for those of you who are kind of
young, he was the main guy at MTV a long time ago. I set a meeting with MTV
just by calling him up and persisting. You never know what you can accomplish
when you put your mind to it. It doesn't matter if your a rug dealer, have a
PHD, or were homeless. My motto is to keep going and to never stop no matter
what!

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orky56
Funny that Plug and Play Tech Center was not mentioned. That's the setting
where Saeed Amidi made those investments and gave real estate to those early
companies mentioned. This was around pre-YC but never quite adapted to what
entrepreneurs really needed: rock solid mentorship as opposed to just real
estate.

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joshu
Did it close? The building it was in seems to have removed the marquis.

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abiekatz
It is still there...<http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/startups/office-
space>

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Salmaun
My wife thought for the longest time that this store was a front for
something. I had heard of a persian landlord in the area taking equity in lieu
of rent for office space leased to startups but first time I'm reading of the
back story of the rug store. Move over Ron Conway :)

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creamyhorror
Pretty darn interesting view in this article. "Hustle" is the magic factor, is
what I got from it. Keep trying and asking for things (intelligently), and
you'll eventually get some of them.

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lrobb
“There are too many of them investing in too many deals,” snickers one
prominent venture capitalist. “This ­doesn’t end well for a lot of white-
haired guys who should know better.”

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zem
something about that guy reminds me of lazarus long from the heinlein novels.
toss him into a brand new environment, and he can look around, take its pulse,
find out almost instinctively where the leverage points are, and land on his
feet.

