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.<p>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!
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].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/sequoia-capital-part-1" rel="nofollow">https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/sequoia-capital-part-1</a>
One of his great talks at Stanford: “Target Big Markets” <a href="https://youtu.be/nKN-abRJMEw" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/nKN-abRJMEw</a>
I first recall reading about Don Valentine in the October 1982 issue of National Geographic on Silicon Valley.<p>An excellent snapshot of Silicon Valley and a glimpse of Don Valentine’s role in it.<p><a href="http://blog.modernmechanix.com/high-tech-high-risk-and-high-life-in-silicon-valley/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.modernmechanix.com/high-tech-high-risk-and-high-...</a><p>Risk/Venture Capital, despite valid criticisms of it, has had an outsized effect on our world in the last 50+ years.<p>And Don Valentine played an outsized role in it.
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)