Michael Moritz - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Michael Moritz is a Welsh-American venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...

in Menlo Park, California

Menlo Park, California

Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...

in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

, and a former member of the board of directors of Google Inc.

Life and career

Moritz was born in Cardiff

Cardiff

Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...

, Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

. He was educated at Howardian High School in Cardiff before moving on to Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...

, where he graduated as a Master of Arts

Master of Arts (Oxbridge)

In the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin, Bachelors of Arts of these universities are admitted to the degree of Master of Arts or Master in Arts on application after six or seven years' seniority as members of the university .There is no examination or study required for the degree...

in history. In 1978, he received a Master of Business Administration

Master of Business Administration

The Master of Business Administration is a :master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. The MBA designation originated in the United States, emerging from the late 19th century as the country industrialized and companies sought out...

degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

The Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wharton was the world’s first collegiate business school and the first business school in the United States...

.

Moritz joined Sequoia in 1986 after working as a reporter for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

, writing the 1984 book The Little Kingdom: the Private Story of Apple Computer
The Little Kingdom
The Little Kingdom is a book that documents Apple Computer. It was published in 1984 and written by Mike Moritz.- External links :* * *...

, and co-authoring "Going for Broke: The Chrysler Story" (with Barrett Seaman, TIME's Detroit bureau chief). After leaving Time, Moritz co-founded Technologic Partners, a technology newsletter and conference company.

His internet company

Dot-com company

A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" .While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with...

investment

Investment

Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...

s include Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

, PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

, Apple Computer

Apple Computer

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

, Cisco

Cisco

Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...

, Webvan

Webvan

Webvan was an online "credit and delivery" grocery business that went bankrupt in 2001. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, USA, near Silicon Valley. It delivered products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. At its peak, it offered service in ten U.S...

, YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, eToys

EToys.com

eToys.com is a retail website that sells toys via the Internet. It was established by a startup company of the same name during the dotcom boom, but the company went bankrupt towards the end of the boom, after which the site went through a number of changes of ownership, and was acquired by Toys...

, and Zappos. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of 24/7 Customer

24/7 Customer

24/7 Customer is a Predictive Customer Experience solutions company. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA, 24/7 Customer is a global online technology and operations company with over 9,000 employees worldwide....

, Gamefly

GameFly

GameFly is an American online video game rental subscription service that specializes in providing games for game consoles and handheld game consoles....

, Green Dot Corporation

Green Dot Corporation

Green Dot Corporation is an issuer of prepaid MasterCard and Visa cards in the United States. These products are available at nearly 50,000 retail stores, including CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens, and RadioShack; as well as with discounted offerings at Meijer and Wal-Mart.The cards may be used like...

, Kayak.com

Kayak.com

KAYAK is a technology company providing online travel tools through its global family of websites and mobile applications. Started by cofounders of Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, KAYAK allows users to compare information from hundreds of other travel websites in one display when booking travel...

, Klarna

Klarna

Klarna provides payment solutions for the e-commerce sector. About 20% of all e-commerce sales in Sweden goes through Klarna. The company's payment solutions,which are built using the programming language Erlang, are offered by more than 10,000 e-stores across Europe – mainly in Germany,...

, LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

and Sugar Inc. Google was a rare co-investment with John Doerr

John Doerr

L. John Doerr is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in Silicon Valley. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the president and his administration with advice and...

of rival venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and the initial public offering

Initial public offering

An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...

of the company in 2004 made him one of Wales' richest men. His investment in Google helped him achieve the number one listing in Forbes'
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

"Midas List" of the top dealmakers in the technology industry in 2006 and 2007, and a place on the 2007 "TIME

Time

Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

100". He ranked number 2 on the Midas List for 2008 and 2009. He is listed by The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

as having a fortune of UK£

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

558 million (circa
Circa
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...

US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

1.1 billion).

On 18 June 2008, Michael Moritz and his wife, American novelist Harriet Heyman, announced a donation of US$50m to Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...

, his former college, the largest single donation in the college’s history.

In 2009, 25 years after "The Little Kingdom," Michael Moritz published a revised and expanded follow-up: "Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World" is available from The Overlook Press

The Overlook Press

The Overlook Press is an American independent publishing house based in New York. It was formed in 1971 by Peter Mayer, who had previously worked at Avon and Penguin Books, where he was CEO from 1978 to 1998. A general-interest publisher, Overlook has over one thousand titles in print, including...

.

On 12 July 2010, Michael Moritz was conferred a Honorary Fellowship from Cardiff University

Cardiff University

Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...

, where his father had previously been employed.

He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children. He was a prominent supporter of President Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's candidacy.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.