NYT: Colin Powell Joins Venture Capital Firm

[DeepModem Mom]

Colin Powell Joins Venture Capital Firm
By GARY RIVLIN
Published: July 13, 2005


SAN FRANCISCO, July 12 - Most everyone you meet in Silicon Valley, or so it sometimes seems, dreams of joining a top venture capital firm, a job that brings prestige and the power to finance promising start-ups - and, not incidentally, typically pays in the millions of dollars....

***

On Wednesday, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, perhaps Silicon Valley's most famous venture firm, will announce that former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is joining the firm as a part-time partner. Mr. Powell acknowledged in an interview Tuesday that he has had any number of tempting job offers since leaving the State Department in January, but that the chance to work as a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins seemed too enticing to turn down.

"I'm fascinated by what the company has done and is doing now," Mr. Powell said of Kleiner Perkins. "It's on the forefront of bringing along new technologies and bringing along entrepreneurs who are changing the world as we know it."

That the partnership turned to someone who has cut so large a figure on the world's stage underscores the increasingly global nature of venture investing.

Yet, the looming question is what the 68-year-old Mr. Powell, who served in the military for 35 years and rose to the rank of four-star general, can offer a venture capital firm that specializes in the financing of biotechnology start-ups and technology companies like Google and Netscape Communications, to name two of its more successful investments....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/13/business/13venture.html

[RethugAssKicker]

1. Just his name... he can offer

no more than that.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Proves that the people in those vc places are shit for brains

bastards who's only qualifications are their connections.

[ugarte]

3. Crony capitalism at its finest

At one time he probably could have become President.

[MrTriumph]

4. He could make presentations

Let's see, provide him with some visuals and them tell him to make whatever he wants to out of them. The truth need not be an obstacle.

A blurry photo of a pick up truck hauling hay? That's a storage building packed with warheads.

A brightly colored lunch menu from Applebee's? That's a black & white satellite image taken of a mushroom cloud.

A drawing of Bugs Bunny munching on a carrot? That's a evil dictator peering through his sunglasses at his goose-stepping troops on parade.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. Here's some archived articles from Fast Company regarding the firm

http://fcke.fastcompany.com/fullfcke.html?cid=484

[lumpy]

6. Colin sent out to 'green pasture'.

grazing on speculative grass.