Michael Moritz: Steve Jobs, Sequoia, and the Weight of History

Speaker A: My guest today is Michael Moritz. He started as a journalist at Time magazine. He then spent 35 years at Sequoia Capital, backing Google, Yahoo, PayPal and YouTube. And before any of that, he wrote the Little Kingdom, an inside account of Apple that caught Steve Jobs and the Macintosh team before the world knew who they were. His new book, Ozlander, tells his own family story during the Holocaust. Michael Moritz, welcome to the Puck.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, it's very nice to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

Speaker A: One of the things that was really intriguing to me was that before Sequoia, you wrote the Little Kingdom. And looking back, what did you get right about Apple and what did you come to understand years later?

Speaker B: I wrote the Little Kingdom an eternity ago. It's almost 40 years ago. And the book was the first book about Apple. And what I was really interested in was the private years of Apple. I was new to this part of California. I'd come out here, uh, into San Francisco as a correspondent for Time magazine. And I had no idea about people who started companies. I had no notion that very young people could start companies. And I was very intrigued by that. But the only thing that really interested me about Apple was where did this company come from and where did these two fellows who started it have the moxie to be able to start company when they were very young men? And I think on the whole, I mean, I've heard it from others. I think the actual chronology and reporting that I was able to do because I had unusual access to both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and others associated with the formation of Apple. Actually, I think it was, um, very accurate because I know when Walter Isaacson came to do his book on, uh, on Steve later, he relied on the Little Kingdom for the early years of Apple, as have others later. So I think, uh, and I had no, you know, there was the, uh, the book which came out I think in 1984, um, offered no predictions about what Apple may eventually would eventually turn into. It was much more just focused on the history of where Apple sprang from.

Speaker A: So when you were invited by Steve to come as the unofficial historian, what do you think made him different before the rest of the world saw it?

Speaker B: Uh, Steve and I had different agendas for. I wanted to write a book about Apple and where it came from. Steve wanted me to do a puff piece about the origin of the Macintosh computer, uh, because there was a very, very popular book that had come out a year or so before called the Soul of a New Machine, the document by Tracy Kidder that documented the making of a minicomputer. And Steve was interested in creating an epic around the formation of. Of Apple. Steve was a bit of a mystic and much more of a poet and artist than people generally understood. He was not another, uh, typecast, closeted fellow whose entire life was fixated around hardware and software and didn't have any external interest. He was an intensely curious guy. He had this affinity for aesthetics, for the arts, for music or contemporary M. Bob Dylan of the era that I think people like Bill Gates and others who were involved with other companies around the, uh. At the time that the personal computer and personal computer software emerged, they just weren't interested in it. And I think that sense of the aesthetic and the sense and demand and desire for perfection in however it could be wrought was something that, uh, it was very evident to me even 40 years ago. Just getting to know Steve pretty well at that point. The others just didn't possess it whatsoever. They were monomaniacal about their fixation.

Speaker A: So as someone, and we're going to get into this, obviously that has seen a lot of entrepreneurs in your day, you use an interesting word to describe them. You said mystic. What does that mean for the rest of us?

Speaker B: Steve was, I think, always interested in exploring aspects of life that others might have considered strange or foreign. He experimented with drugs. He took a trip to India. He was on the fringes or verge, I think, of, uh, dropping out and exploring this universe. The Ken Kesey and the other poets and balladeers of the era are, um, well known for. And there was something intensely soulful about, I think, his quest for the inner meaning of life. I just don't think that that was something that many of his peers even gave a second thought to.

Speaker A: Coincidence or part of what made him as successful as he was.

Speaker B: I think it was integral to his success because it was what differentiated him. And this alternate way of looking at everything, this immense questioning and pursuit of, you know, whether perhaps it was in his inner life or as expressed through Apple, this quest for meaning and perfection that, uh, became very evident in the Apple products, particularly after he rejoined Apple in the late 1990s.

Speaker A: Uh, you talked about differentiation and being special and what makes somebody special. With respect to Steve, you were a time journalist, not a venture capitalist. When Don Valentina hired you, what do you think he saw? What did everyone else miss? Because if I'm not mistaken, you interviewed at other VC firms and yet it was Sequoia and Don that gave you this opportunity.

Speaker B: Uh, Don, unlike others, didn't have a fixed sense of the attributes that somebody would need to be successful in the venture capital business. There weren't that many firms around at that point. It's not like today, um, Don didn't have a fixed view of what it took to be successful in the venture business because he. I remember, you know, asking him in an interview about what it took to be successful, and he said he didn't really know because the people that he had expected, some of the people he'd expected to be successful in the venture business because they had a very deeply technical background or because they'd worked in Silicon Valley companies or because they'd run something, had turned out to be disasters. Whereas there were two or three people of renown, most notably a gentleman called Arthur Rock, who had no technical background, had never worked, uh, in a technology company, but had yet become very, very successful in the venture business. So he wasn't fixated on a particular resume as the necessary background for success, and he was more open to, you know, somebody who's a complete outsider to Silicon Valley.

Speaker A: So then you switch roles, and you, for 30, 35 years after that were doing the judging. How do you. I mean, how do you recognize real leaders before everyone else does?

Speaker B: I think it's much harder today than it used to be, simply because, you know, 1984 and 1985, when I got into the venture business, it was a very small business. And this is a long time ago in the evolution of Silicon Valley and before the Internet, before almost perfect dissemination of information when there was more time to get to know somebody that you would form a business relationship with. Um, and because of the nutty aspect of the venture business today, there's very little time to do that. And so we had back then the luxury of time in order to find out about somebody. But let's be very straightforward. I also made a lot of mistakes, and it's very difficult. And. And there's a huge element of chance and luck, I think, associated with it in trying to figure out whether a young person, you know, perhaps he or she is 19 or 22. How are they going to evolve? They may know a tremendous amount about a particular idea that they want to turn into a company or into a product or service, but they may not have the faintest clue about the attributes required to build a management team and develop a company. And so you're trying to forecast, how are they going to evolve? Are they going to be able to attract the necessary talent? Are they going to have the temperament to be able to corral these different personalities, provide the leadership that is necessary, and all the other attributes required in first building and then leading a company over a very long period of time. And look at the people of the current era. I know he sort of stepped back to a chairman's role, but, uh, look at the length of time that Jeff Bezos ran Amazon, and look at how old he was when he started, when he started the business. And I'm sure many people at that point thought or his backers may have had big questions about how is this gentleman or how is this young man going to evolve? Is he going to be able to take it all the way? So I think there's a huge amount of uncertainty associated with it, and you just, at the end of it, have

Speaker A: to follow your instincts, uh, in following your instincts, but also just looking back over this long period of time, and I'm interested in character and how character develops, and I think we could use a little more of it in our system today. Do you think character reveals itself more in the area of success or from adversity?

Speaker B: Uh, you asked about Steve Jobs earlier, and I think he became a far better leader, having gone through his wilderness years after he got booted out of Apple and then struggled with both Pixar and with Next against all odds, and found both a very humbling experience. And he came out of that period, obviously, Pixar, uh, became a big success with Toy Story at the end of what was a very long journey where it looked as if the company would fail, and then NEXT got bought by Apple. I think he was a much wiser man, naturally, having gone through all of that. And also he was by then 10, 12 years older. He was a far wiser man and a far better leader at that point than he was when he got booted out of Apple.

Speaker A: Interesting. So let's pivot a little and talk about. I know you have Oslaner coming out in the States. I believe it's already been released in Britain. But as we move into that, as I understand it, certain things changed after your mother's death, and you uncovered certain things about your family story. What changed in you?

Speaker B: Well, it's nice of you to bring it up. And you're right. Auslander, which is a family memoir that I wrote, came out in Britain some time ago and is now appearing in America or in the United States. It was a combination of circumstances. You know, both my parents were refugees from Nazi Germany, and I had obviously been aware of the broad brushstrokes of their story and the horrors of mid 20th century Europe. I had grown up with those in the Background. But then my mother died shortly before COVID and shortly before her 96th birthday. And my father had died many years earlier. And um, a couple of months later, my sister, who lives in London, sent me full boxes of documents, papers, photographs that she had, um, cleaned out of my parents house. And I had no intention whatsoever of writing a book. None whatsoever. Hadn't really crossed my mind about writing a family memoir. And then I think partly because of COVID because I had more time on my hands. There was no commuting, there was no travel. And the day seemed longer. I began going through these materials and became absorbed by the story and all the little bits, all the nitty gritty facts that my parents hadn't really talked about. Nor had I had the intelligence to pose and ask when I was much younger. So I kept uncovering bits of the story. It doesn't really matter what the backdrop is. These big sweeps of human history, maybe what's going on in any particular country right now. Whether a peace or at war. I think the way to bring it to life for uh, regular people is to tell the story of the big political and social upheavals and changes through the tale of a few individuals. I think it just brings it to life. And obviously for me, because it was my family, it was intensely personal and therefore a matter of great interest, at least to me. But our family was just one little, the tiniest of fragments caught up in this human whirlwind. But it became something of a mystery tour and, you know, set of dozens of rabbit holes. I went down as I began researching the real detail. Because it's the detail that makes these stories vivid.

Speaker A: I want to get into a little bit about detail. Uh, but before we do, I think you said Oslnder was an emotional experience for you. What do you think surprised you about yourself?

Speaker B: It was uncovering the past of my parents and beginning to understand also the fact that I'm now in my 70s and at a different stage of life. Beginning to understand what shaped them and, um, the forces that shaped them and the turmoil and emotional turmoil that they themselves had gone through that I don't think that they were ever able to resolve. This was written in the 50s and 60s and um, therapy was considered something for complete basket cases and not something any normal person would do. So they never had the benefit of therapy or anything like that. And so they were always, I think, without realizing it, tormented by their past. And um, for me, understanding that torment and then how that got imprinted on me, just growing up in that environment. With those sorts of parents as role models, uh, made me understand myself a lot better.

Speaker A: Unpack that for us. I mean, if you feel comfortable sharing it. When you said it helped you reveal certain things. I mean, you made the comment that you're in your 70s now. I'm in my late 60s and, you know, uh, also from Jewish descent. And, you know, remember my grandparents, me telling me stories about getting out of Germany, and those people that had diamond rings, for instance, were able to get out because they had a currency they could use to get out. I know you talk about passports, but. But from your perspective, what do you think in this more introspective period of your life? Did it reveal to you?

Speaker B: It's a very complicated question or. It's a question that I think stirs up, um, a whole bunch of more questions. I think the real central issue is about being different and what it feels like not to be part of the mainstream. Because my parents, in particular, my mother, always had a fear of standing out. And I grew up in. My parents had settled in South Wales in Britain, and there were not very, very many Jewish families in Wales. And Britain was not, at that point, a multicultural society as it is today. So we stood out when we were different. And obviously, when you're a child, you have this impulse and need to be like every other child. And the thing that really made it stand out for me, if you're. Bear with me here, is this. Many moons ago, before cell phones and everything else, um, there were things called telephone directories with everybody's name in them. And once a year, we got a new telephone directory in Cardiff. And it listed if you wanted to find out a telephone number, you went to the directory and you looked up somebody's name and you found their telephone number, and then you call them. Once a year, we got a new telephone directory. And I remember there was this period in my early teens when I rushed to the door or found the telephone directory and riffled through the directory. And this being Wales, there were dozens and dozens of pages of people with Welsh last names, like Jones or Edwards or Hughes or Evans or Williams or Lloyds. There were just dozens and dozens of people with these last names. And then I go to the EMS and look down, um, the list, hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping that we were not the only Moritz in the telephone directory. And every year, we were the only Moritz in the Welsh telephone directory. And as I. It's a little preposterous, but even as I tell that story, I. I sort of have chills even just thinking about it. And to me, it highlighted, even though it's so trivial, obviously, it highlighted what it meant to be, uh, different. And everything reverberated and was amplified as a result of that. I mean, I remember going to school or people asking me, moritz, well, what sort of name is that? It's not a Welsh name, is it? And in the 1960s, and, you know, I used to say, no, no, it's not a Welsh name. It's from Switzerland. Switzerland? Yeah. Why Switzerland? You would ask, why Switzerland? Because if you said a German name, it's a German name. In the 1960s, I was going to school with the kids of parents who'd fought against the Germans. So the Germans were still in the popular mind. As I was growing up in Cardiff, were Persona non grata. And nobody of my age could really tell the difference between a German and. And the son of German Jewish refugees. So I think it was that that was the main thing that sprang out of it all.

Speaker A: What's fascinating to me is that was at a very young age. And when I look at my career in America, when I started at Gibson DUNN in the 80s, half my class was Jewish. But in 1960, you didn't tell people you were Jewish. The big firms were not hiring Jewish people. And, uh, you know, I have a German last name, too, as a Jew Bear. And, you know, we went through this golden age, and all of a sudden, if you look at the last several years, there's been a shift in this country. How has that affected you? And when you think about your paternal grandfather, who was a judge and a World War I veteran, how does all of that play together with this zeitgeist of being, you know, a minority, so to speak?

Speaker B: Well, it's more pronounced today in America and also in Britain, where I spend a fair amount of time because of what's happening in the Middle east and because of what's happening between Israel and Iran and Israel and Gaza, and I think we are both well aware, and most people are well aware of the strains of antisemitism that are in the air today. I don't delude myself. I think antisemitism, for me, I'm not complaining about it. I think it's just a condition of humanity. And to some extent, if I look at my own life, I think I've benefited from feeling like an outsider. Uh, but I can understand how. I don't agree with it, but I can understand how people get everything modeled up. The Shoah, the Holocaust is now close to 100 years ago. So if you were somebody who was born in the last 30 years. It seems a very, very distant memory. The association of genocide with, in particular the Holocaust doesn't make any connection. It doesn't mean anything for young people. And there's great confusion about in this country and elsewhere, I think that associates every Jew, no matter where they live, with being a fervent supporter of everything that Israel is doing. And I don't think many people aren't capable of making the difference. They're not capable of. Or they don't understand. They're capable of it, but they don't really understand that. There are a lot of Jews, both in Israel and outside Israel, who do not agree with all of the policies of the current, um, government in Israel. And not a day goes by without a reminder of that. For me, the great sadness is

Speaker A: the

Speaker B: lack of general understanding of the history of not just the 20th century, the history of the Jews in the Middle East. And there's a very low degree of comprehension of that, I think in most European and certainly in the United States. There's just nothing taught in the school curriculums about that. So a lot of what emanates today, I think, is just because of lack of knowledge.

Speaker A: I know, for instance, you've talked about applying for a German passport, and I think one of the reasons you've talked about is that their educational system is different. When you think about fighting anti Semitism and you think about how, just like a venture capitalist has to see where the puck is going and how to build a company and actually evolve and change, when you look at the evolution of antisemitism, if you look at Germany today, what can we learn from this? And is there a hopeful way to address this as opposed to just saying it's going to always be with us?

Speaker B: I don't think, uh, no matter how much you and I and others may wish that it disappears, I don't think that's ever going to happen. I actually have become a naturalized German citizen, and I did so for two reasons, really. I think the first is just being aware of this rising current of, of antisemitism. I mean, particularly actually in Britain, where it's quite pronounced. I mean, you have children, Jewish children who are going to schools who get abuse or physically assaulted. Um, I have cousins in Manchester who live within half a mile of where they're all murders that are synagogue a few months ago. So it's very apparent there. And I feel unsettled. And I think it comes back to the lack of education in both Britain and America. And I Think one of the things, and I'm not blind to what is happening with the rise of the right in Germany, but the one thing that the German educational system has stressed is, and it's core part of the curriculum, even though it may be beginning to fade today, is the education about the Shoah and the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazis and the persecution of Jews in particular, but also a lot of other minorities. And there's far greater recognition of that and therefore tolerance in Germany, I think, than there is in the West. And that was one reason. And the second reason is having understood how vital passports are, um, and the fact that the relatives of mine who got murdered 80 years ago, the reason that they couldn't get out of Germany was the lack of a visa, the lack of a passport. So one of the lessons that I took away from exploring my family's background was, and it sounds trite, but I think it's true that for a Jew, you can never have enough passports because you just don't know when people are going to start coming after you.

Speaker A: And that is for a person who has had the success that you've had, that has found and identified some of the greatest companies in the history of the world and who is, you know, lived and moved to Britain from Germany. I mean, just they have the experiences you've had at this stage of your life to feel like you have to look over your shoulder. I mean, what's that like?

Speaker B: I don't want to overstate it, because if you said to me, do you think you'd ever make your home in Germany? Do you think you'd ever leave the United States? I think the answer to both those questions is no. I mean, these are, uh, insurance policies, but my relatives didn't have insurance policies, and they paid for it. I take sort of great pride in the fact that Jews, I think, um, in Silicon Valley have played a vital part in some of the most important companies that have been formed over the last 70 or 80 years. I live in a city with a wonderful Jewish mayor, um, and feel an intense loyalty to San Francisco, which has been my home and its wife without having lived in San Francisco, which has a very long history of philanthropy from the Jewish community that benefits the entire city of, uh, San Francisco. I feel real intense obligation to do what I can to help San Francisco prosper and flourish. But nonetheless, I do want the insurance policy in my back pocket.

Speaker A: That makes sense, and I'm a firm believer in insurance as well. And a lot of my friends are buying that insurance right now. You know, some are going to Israel or having a passport to Israel. Some are Northern Ireland. I mean, just Ireland, different places.

Speaker B: But I think, you know, you. You raise an interesting point. I think there are also a lot of Israelis or educated Israelis. Not a lot, but some educated Israelis who are afraid of the rise of tyranny within their own country and they're seeking to leave. And I think where anytime in Israel, it's obviously from the extreme right and the ultra orthodox and the grip that they have over the government and the fear of it, uh, collapsing into theocracy. But anytime there's the prospect of theocracy or tyranny on the rise, it doesn't matter whether you live in Israel or whether you live in San Francisco, people get alarmed.

Speaker A: By the way, going back to San Francisco for a second, I think I read that you had offered $150 million to the winner of the best ideas to improve San Francisco is, I guess, the reason I want to touch on it. Is the offer still available? And either way, uh, I live in Los Angeles, and I think about different things we could do to make this city better. I'm curious what the response has been and what ideas you're coming up with.

Speaker B: Well, it's nice of you to ask about this. So, uh, Harriet, my wife, and I, we started a Family foundation called CrankStar a long time ago, and it's very active around San Francisco. 60% of the giving that we make is in San Francisco in the Bay Area. And it's almost entirely focused on either individuals or entities who, uh, have been left behind in one fashion or another. But we're also very aware of the fact we have this wonderful crackerjack small team that runs the foundation with us, that there are any number of ways to improve San Francisco. But in a way, it's like being in the venture business. You have a certain number of ideas inside of your venture firm. But, you know, there are far more interesting, greater ideas outside of the venture firm. And so that's what we're trying to do here with this challenge. So what we did fairly recently was issue a challenge in conjunction with an organization called Lever for Change that's very experienced in doing this to try and make sure that we're not missing anything obvious that could really help improve the San Francisco. So we've offered $150 million, uh, in sort of three tranches, hoping to find three really interesting and large ideas to which we can award $50 million each. That's. That are going to have a discernible effect on San Francisco. And I think the closing date, I may be off a little bit, is mid September for the submissions. And the submissions are beginning to come in, but I haven't read any of them yet. We'll look at them all when they've come in, and we're certainly hoping that we're going to find, uh, some nuggets here that we wouldn't have uncovered before.

Speaker A: I'd love you to share them, um, with us here in Los Angeles. Healthy competition between the south and the north, as you know.

Speaker B: No, but I know we all live together and Los Angeles is hurting, and I'm very aware of that.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think about, you know, what creatively can we do for homelessness? What creatively can we do to bring communities together? Like, almost like having people having block parties and getting to know their neighbors and really getting more in terms of bringing out community. We had Robert Putnam's partner on about the upswing and kind of how we went from we to eye and back again and really building a sense of community. So I'm really interested to see what you come up with because, again, we should share all these great ideas. And the nice thing about America with 50 states is we really do have these different incubators.

Speaker B: Right. And I'm hoping that the top three ideas are better than move to Texas.

Speaker A: So switching back to something, I just. I. It was on my list of something to ask you, which is when you. When you wrote Oslander, I mean, what, if anything, did it change to you about being Jewish?

Speaker B: It made me. I'm not an observant Jew. I'm not a practicing Jew. And it, uh, really made me identify as being Jewish and being far more public about it and not being afraid of it. And I think I mentioned earlier in, uh, our conversation the fact that my mother never wanted to stand out. And I sort of inherited a lot of that and went through this period where I to myself denied the fact that I was Jewish. I didn't really do it externally, but it's made me much more willing to speak out, in part because I think the sort of emotional stew that this has all stirred up for me is very common to. It doesn't matter whether you come from Puerto Rico or Haiti or, um, you're Asian American or you're any other form of minority. I think any member of a minority has a similar sensation. I think there's some benefit in speaking out in this country to make sure that minorities of all hues and stripes and colors, ah, are never trampled on, um, never tyrannized. Never forgotten, and valued as contributing members of society.

Speaker A: When you talk about obviously extremes, whether or not it's fundamentalists in terms of Orthodox or Christians or Muslims or far, far left, I'm a person who likes to live in the middle. I don't like extremes. The middle way is much more attractive to me. But from a middle way perspective, for people that are not really familiar with what it means to be Jewish, forget being Orthodox or being traditional, knowing there's 150 generations between Sinai and Utah and your culture and who you are, what do you think is unique about your Judaism and who you are?

Speaker B: Beyond the fact that I've in a very, very small way had some notoriety for, uh, the work that I've done, um, in Silicon Valley, I don't think there's anything that is particularly special about me.

Speaker A: What about the fact that you are doing as much charitable work as you are doing?

Speaker B: There are plenty of others who do a lot more. And every time I look at the amount, the amount of money that Bill Gates or others give away every year, I always, it always helps me feel like even though we're helping people, I understand that it all feels very insignificant in comparison to.

Speaker A: I've been doing a lot of episodes on space recently. And when you look up at the stars, I think it's easy to see how insignificant individually we are. But then collectively there's a lot of power in group dynamics. But Michael, you've had these intense experiences. I mean, you know, I know there was the Aberfon coal mining tragedy when you were a boy. My understanding is 20 years ago, you had a rare blood genetic illness that you overcame. I mean, you've had these experiences. How would those also shaped who you are?

Speaker B: They just become a part of life. I have a friend, a close friend of mine, who much um, younger than me, who was a British soldier who lost both his legs in Afghanistan. And I've talked to him a lot about losing the legs and he said, and this I think talks to all sorts of past experiences, whether it relates to me or others. And this friend of mine said very wisely, it's just part of who I am. Interesting.

Speaker A: Well, Michael, this has been. Getting to know you and who you are has been a wonderful hour for me.

Speaker B: Jim, you've been very generous and uh, I appreciate you spending all the time that you did on um, on our slander. Very thought provoking. So I'm, I'm very grateful for the invitation. We didn't talk about Manchester United Football Club or um, anything like that, but I don't think that's very germane to what we're talking about today.

Speaker A: The only thing, selfishly, I'd love to hear a little bit about is your. Do you have a love of wine? How does that relate to your life?

Speaker B: We're just about to open our second, um, hotel. We've got a hotel that we operate, um, countryside retreat in Tuscany where the focus is on some familial experiences much more than wine. I am not a, I'm not a wine expert. I enjoy a good glass of wine, but I'm not somebody who could tell you whether this particular vintage that I'm tasting from the same vineyard was made in or, you know, was released in 1998 or 1992. No, Italy to me is. And Tuscany for me is much more about family experiences than wine.

Speaker A: Well, it's funny, we've been to Italy recently and we're going to go back. Where did you go when we went to. We were in Rome and Positano and I have a dear friend who I grew up with and we're talking about river cruises, we're talking about Tuscany. Like you, I, you know, I gave which slope, you know, which. Which how. Is it rare? No, you know, I went to a Bordeaux tasting with a bunch of very sophisticated people and mine was the only Bordeaux not finished. I do appreciate a good glass of wine, but I can't tell you what year it was for from.

Speaker B: Yeah, right. Well, let me know if you ever head to Tuscany. And you're very welcome at our place.

Speaker A: The Puck Venture Capital and beyond is brought to you by CMEG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation today and haven't yet subscribed to our show, you can find us on YouTube, iTunes, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. Feel free to leave a review while you are there and maybe even a five star rating. You can also follow us on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube for updates, highlights and more content from our team. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon with a new episode.