Remembering Sandy Robertson, who helped create Silicon Valley

A few years after starting Salesforce, I was invited to a special dinner to celebrate a friend’s wedding. The location was the home of Sandy Robertson, a Silicon Valley legend. I was thrilled. I always wanted to meet Sandy. A Midwesterner who predicted the technological revolution years before the Wall Street establishment, he was present at the creation of Silicon Valley, shaping the financial infrastructure that fueled its remarkable rise.

We hit it off immediately, finding chemistry in our shared passion for everything from technology to modern art and our love of Hawaii. We also discovered that our offices were in the same building –1 Market Street in San Francisco – and we planned to meet there the next day. Sandy, as always, showed up at the right time. I asked him spontaneously if he would consider joining our board. With the same spontaneity, he said yes, beginning a friendship and mentorship that lasted nearly two decades, until Sandy sadly passed away on August 3, aged 93.

In an industry of outsized personalities, Sandy kept a low profile. But there are few people in the world of technology whose careers have touched so many people and so many companies. Curiosity and a genuine interest in others were key to his success in being able to identify the next big thing. That’s why, as a young manager at Smith Barney’s Chicago office, he jumped at the opportunity to move to San Francisco. “With four hours notice, I came to the West Coast,” he said. counted a podcaster for a few years now. “I was really excited by the people I met in Silicon Valley – the entrepreneurs, the scientists and the engineers.”

Over more than six decades, a period in which Silicon Valley transformed from a collection of semiconductor companies into a global technology hub, Sandy seemed to have a finger in everything. This was partly due to his unbridled enthusiasm for innovation and innovators. The list of companies he helped grow was as broad as it was long: Gilead Sciences, eBay, AOL, Sun Microsystems, Dell, AOL, Pixar, E*TRADE, and many others.

One Silicon Valley story called Sandy “the genesis of investment banking in San Francisco.” Often overlooked is Sandy’s background as a serial entrepreneur in his own right. He founded not one but two of the four companies – the so-called Four Horsemen – that long dominated Silicon Valley banking: Robertson, Coleman, Siebel & Weisel, which became Montgomery Securities, and Robertson, Stephens & Company , which was later sold to Bank. Of America. In 1999, he again co-founded his own company, Francisco Partners, which has invested in more than 450 technology companies. Playing this kind of role in a major industry once is remarkable; doing this repeatedly is almost unheard of.

Sandy’s enthusiasm—“the joy thing,” as our mutual friend Bob Grady rightly calls it—extended far beyond technology into the arts, sports, and philanthropy. He was a major donor to UCSF, inspiring me to do the same, and to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, even creating an endowment for a Wolverines football offensive coordinator. He enjoyed his role in later life as a Broadway impresario, investing in productions including Hamilton, Spamalot, Leopoldstadt, Cinderella, An American in Paris and this season Suffer. Another passion was the thoroughbred horse racewhere he also saw his share of victories – and found lessons for life and business.

Sandy was once asked in a interview to the Computer History Museum whether people or ideas are more important in making investment decisions. “Some venture capital people say it’s a matter of betting on the jockey or the horse, the interviewer said. “It’s the jockey. There’s no doubt about it,” Sandy replied without missing a beat. “Choose the right person.”

For countless entrepreneurs and innovators over the decades who sought to build the companies that transformed our world, Sandy Robertson was exactly the right person, without a doubt – the jockey who guided us, mentored us and helped us run faster and further than ever before. that never. I thought possible.