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Scott Sandell

Scott Sandell16 posts

Scott Sandell is a venture capitalist based in Menlo Park, Calif. He holds a BA in Science from Dartmouth College, where he was also a member of the rowing team, and an MBA from Stanford University. He is General Partner at New Enterprise Associates, where he was worked since 1995, and is also chairman of the National Venture Capital Association. A former product manager at Microsoft, where he worked on Windows 95, he has made investments in Tableau Software, Bloom Energy, BloomReach, CloudFlare, Coursera, and other companies. He is married with three children and lives in Portola Valley.

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27 Jun, 2014

Forbes interview

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Sandell talks about what he learned about business from rowing, becoming a venture capitalist, and investing in the innovation economy from life sciences, biotechnology and medical devices to IT, including everything from semiconductors to consumer internet.

We see a pretty wide swath of what’s happening.  And what’s clearly the case is that there is more positive innovation cycles now than at any time in my 20 years in venture capital or even my 30 years in the technology industry overall. It’s a very, very exciting time.

I think there are some fundamental technology changes which are benefiting lots and lots of different kinds of businesses–obviously, in the information technology side with the ability to process information and to compute things more and more cheaply all the time. Moore’s law is alive and well and has been since the ‘60s.

2014

Featured in rowing book

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Sandell’s former rowing coach at Dartmouth writes a book about the team after their 25-year reunion. Working In Sync features a separate chapter on each of the team’s athletes and how rowing helped them achieve professional success. Sandell:

I think it’s the ultimate team sport.  If somebody leans out of the boat two inches in the wrong direction, it tips the boat over or upsets the balance enough that it can create a boat-stopping event. There’s not very much room for the oars to move above the water, and the boat has to be perfectly balanced to create enough space for everyone to get their oar out of the water, and then move it to the position from the finish back to the catch.  So it’s the ultimate team sport.

3 Mar, 2004

Applied Micro buys 3Ware

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Applied Micro Circuits Corp. agrees to buy 3Ware for $150 million cash, to expand its storage-system product line.

2000

Second 3Ware funding

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NEA adds more funds in the second round. Sandell:

As one of the early investors in 3ware, we’ve witnessed first-hand the exponential growth and demand for the company’s fundamentally new storage solution. The most compelling advantage of 3ware’s next-generation product is that it leverages a company’s existing Ethernet infrastructure

21 Aug, 2000

LA Times feature

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Sandell is profiled for the LA Times, which sends a staff writer to follow him to meetings with internet CEOs, investment bankers, engineers, and other people looking to get in on deals. His day starts at 8 a.m. at the NEA office on Sand Hill Rd., followed by meetings in Italian restaurants, the NEA boardroom, and assessing an internal pitch by an NEA staffer looking for funding for his own venture, finally ending at 11 p.m. He describes the job:

Sometimes it’s overwhelming. But it never fails to be interesting

2000

NetIQ investment

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Sandell makes a $5 million early-stage investment in NetIQ for NEA. By mid-2000, it is reported to be worth $116 million.

In order to keep my job, I figured I had to turn $10 million into $40 million.

1998

3Ware investment

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Sandell makes an investment in the seed funding round.

Passes on Vignette

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Sandell passes on Vignette after he and the CEO take turns missing meetings. The publishing workflow software provider gets $3.5 million from Austin Ventures, Sigma Partners and CNET in the seed round, $10 million from Adobe Ventures L.P., Attractor Investment Management, and Charles River Ventures in the second round, and $14.3 million in the third round from Goldman Sachs private investment funds, Hambrecht & Quist, and Amerindo.

31 Jan, 1995

Joins New Enterprise Associates

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Sandell joins the venture capital firm after he prepares a business plan for a company that wants venture funding.

I ended up at NEA in January of 1995  just as things were getting started in terms of the internet revolution.

1 Dec, 1994

Leaves Microsoft to get married

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Sandell leaves the company:

I then went back to Microsoft for a while after graduating, but, ultimately, came back to the valley since my wife, then girlfriend and former Stanford classmate, got her dream job in Menlo Park. So I came back.  We got married.

31 Dec, 1992

Joins Microsoft

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Sandell joins Microsoft full-time as product manager, and continues to work on Windows 95.

1990

Enters Stanford

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Sandell enters the MBA program at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

1989

C-ATS Software

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Sandell joins the Palo Alto startup and is sent to London to open the sales office there. It eventually covers eight European countries and the company goes public on NASDAQ.

I had sold fertilizer for the boy scouts, if that’s what you mean. I was selling software for currency interest rate swap traders in international banks. I didn’t know anything about currency interest rates swap trading.  I’d never sold anything professionally.  And I’d never been in a start-up and it had no venture capital…  So if I didn’t sell something, people didn’t get paid. It was a high-stakes job to say the least. I was living in a foreign country on the first day that I took the job, which had its own set of challenges. But it was a great adventure

1986

Boston Consulting Group

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Sandell works for the management consulting firm after graduating Dartmouth.

I  wanted to be in business somewhere, somehow, and I just didn’t know what business I wanted to be in.  One of my professors recommended that I try management consulting as a way to learn about the industry or businesses I might want to choose. I went to the Boston Consulting Group in Boston and was there for about two-and-a-half years.

1982

Dartmouth College

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Sandell attends Dartmouth, where he studies for a Bachelor of Arts in Engineering Sciences. He is involved with the school’s rowing team, and says the lessons he learned help him in later life:

Due to an injury, I ended up being a coach as well, which I think was probably my first glimmer into what it’s like to be a venture capitalist. Because I view us as coaches of entrepreneurs and partners of entrepreneurs, and that’s what coaches are for athletes.