All smiles ring malibu gems9/1/2023 ![]() One idea after another, pitched by passionate, interesting people. They worked for McKinsey and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Every other one it seems went to MIT or Cal Tech. One founder developed weapons for the Department of Defense. His partners keep in touch on a Slack channel. They're all on their laptops and their phones while the presentations happen on a big screen at the end of the room. As he does that, the companies keep presenting new ideas. 16 should write him directly, politely, and tell him they're interested and would love to connect. Much bigger investors than Liquid 2 are also after these ideas. That guy, Amer Baroudi, is a Rhodes scholar and a founder of a company they love. "So that guy hasn't responded to us," Matt tells him. We take the doughnuts and his computer down the hall to a conference room. "How they get along? How long they've known each other?" "You just look at the teams and the relationship of the founders," he says. They're headed toward 10 times the original investment. ![]() Their first fund is a big success and contains 21 "unicorns," which is slang for a billion-dollar company. His daughter, Elizabeth, runs the office with a velvet fist. Recently he brought in his son, Nate, along with a former Notre Dame teammate of Nate's named Matt Mulvey - which makes three Fighting Irish quarterbacks. He's got two founding partners, Michael Ma and Mike Miller. His company, Liquid 2, consists of multiple funds. Without considering my audience - 11 plays, 92 yards, 2 minutes, 46 seconds - I marvel at the insanity of having your entire future determined in an instant. You can hear the nerves in their voices as they talk into their webcam. A company founder promises to, say, fully automate the packing process, reducing manual labor from days to hours, a market opportunity of $10 billion. Each founder gets about a minute and a half to two minutes to pitch investors like Joe. Four Super Bowl rings buy him very little this morning on the last day of the Y Combinator - a kind of blind date Silicon Valley prom that puts a highly curated group of 400 founders in front of a thousand or so top investors. There's a signed John Candy photo a client sent him - a nod to a famous moment in his old life - leaning against the wall. It's a tiny office, stark, with mostly empty shelves, a place rigged for work. ![]() It's a big day for his venture capital firm and nothing spreads cheer like an open box of doughnuts. so chocolate, regular and maple crumb," he says. He's got on Chuck Taylors and a fly-fishing T-shirt. MONTANA COMES INTO his San Francisco office waving around a box of doughnuts he picked up at a hole in the wall he loves. "You start thinking," he says, his voice trailing off. Placid on the surface, churning beneath the waves. He sits at his desk and taps his fingers on his thumb, counting, keeping track of odds and evens. 12 jerseys because there can only be one unquestioned greatest of all time. A fourth, a fifth, a sixth and a seventh. The boy, of course, went on to win his own Super Bowls. But over time the boy who sat in the upper deck idolizing Montana delivered on his own dreams and built his own reputation. His reputation had been bought in blood and preceded him like rose petals. Forced out of the game by injuries, Montana left as the unquestioned greatest of all time. Tommy enrolled as a freshman at Michigan the year Joe Montana retired from football. They looked down onto the field and dreamed. They sat in the upper deck of Candlestick Park together on Sundays. Tom Brady Sr., bought his son, Tommy, a No. What my father knew when he gave me that jersey was that only one of them was Joe Montana. Only 746 men have ever played the position in the modern NFL and just 35 of them are in the Hall of Fame. Lots of young men like my father play high school quarterback, roughly 16,000 starters in America each year. He was an ambitious man who had played quarterback in high school and loved what that detail told people about him - here, friends, was a leader, a winner, a person his peers trusted most in moments when they needed something extraordinary. On trips home I half expect to still see my dad sitting at the head of the long dining room table, papers strewn, working on a brief or a closing argument. The last time I visited my mom, I looked for it in her closets. I don't remember when he gave it to me, or why, but I'll never forget the way the mesh sleeves felt against my arms. MY LATE FATHER bought me a Joe Montana jersey when I was a boy. NFL, San Francisco 49ers, Kansas City Chiefs You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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