
Don Valentine has died - gatsby
https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/remembering-don-valentine/
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ChuckMcM
Don was a pretty amazing guy. He was the chairman at NetApp when I was there
and told me I was crazy to be pushing NetApp to use an untested AMD processor
(Opteron) for the high end filer of the time.

What resulted was a solid discussion that ranged from how reliable AMD was to
how important Intel was to Netapp, and how to measure the "betterness" of one
technology over another. I really respected that he could be opinionated and
listen at the same time, always willing to cede to a well reasoned argument
about how he might be wrong about something. He was also really good at poking
holes in an argument so I found myself on the defensive a lot!

~~~
tyingq
Great share. I remember the inflection point that Opteron was. Essentially, it
killed Sparc, PA-RISC, Alpha, Itanium, etc. That was a unique moment in time.
Hearing a personal anectode between someone relatively junior at the time, and
a legend, is very interesting to me. It was, really, the moment Linux/x86
"won". That 64 bit hurdle defined where we are today.

At the time, it inspired me to make a pitch that "RISC was dead", despite it's
technical superiority. Kind of a VHS vs Betamax moment. My pitch worked out,
and was probably the defining moment of my career.

I'm pretty happy that AMD is, again, riding high. Underdog stories are more
rare these days. And you had a not insignificant part in that.

~~~
servrite
Opteron never killed SPARC. The changing market dynamics of Cloud did.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I was at Sun when SPARC was invented. And I think Sun killed it.

Every time someone started trying to take advantage of the "open" nature of
SPARC, Sun would out compete them, fairly or not. It was a pretty open secret
that Sun had hitched its wagon to the "best" processor for running Unix
servers. As I told the leadership after I left that Sun was becoming DEC. They
were retreating to the enterprise data center, nobody was buying workstations
any more, and Solaris was not getting any more open. I suggested they build
servers with the Opteron too :-).

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LeonM
If you want to learn more about Don and how influential his work has been, I
recommend listening the recent Acquired episode about Don and Sequoia [0].

[0] [https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/sequoia-capital-
part-1](https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/sequoia-capital-part-1)

~~~
chriselles
Great episode. Will listen to it again on a long walk today.

I’ve always sought commentary and quotes from Don Valentine to help me learn
more about being an angel investor the same way I have have always Warren
Buffett’s commentary and shareholder letters to learn how to be a better long-
term investor.

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scapecast
One of his great talks at Stanford: “Target Big Markets”
[https://youtu.be/nKN-abRJMEw](https://youtu.be/nKN-abRJMEw)

~~~
joeblau
I loved watching this talk — After watching this I gained a new level of
appreciation for the VC model they pioneered.

~~~
scapecast
If you then also listen to the episode on Acquired, it’s eye-opening on how he
/ sequoia decide on making investments.

~~~
joeblau
Just listened to it[1] twice; Thanks for the recommendation!

[1] - [https://castro.fm/episode/bwHpe7](https://castro.fm/episode/bwHpe7)

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chriselles
I first recall reading about Don Valentine in the October 1982 issue of
National Geographic on Silicon Valley.

An excellent snapshot of Silicon Valley and a glimpse of Don Valentine’s role
in it.

[http://blog.modernmechanix.com/high-tech-high-risk-and-
high-...](http://blog.modernmechanix.com/high-tech-high-risk-and-high-life-in-
silicon-valley/)

Risk/Venture Capital, despite valid criticisms of it, has had an outsized
effect on our world in the last 50+ years.

And Don Valentine played an outsized role in it.

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gumby
Really a great, supportive guy, and very kind in a pitch meeting, even when
you are completely losing it. In general I've found the sequoia folks to be a
class act (with a couple of, to me, egregious exceptions)

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melling
“ his high school friend, Steve Wozniak.”

This can’t be right.

~~~
sokoloff
That line also gave me pause, but I think it was meant to say that Woz was
Jobs’ high school friend (which is also wrong, but much less wrong).

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jorgenveisdal
Rest in peace Don!

