The Survivor's Edge
Michael Moritz's grandfather escaped Germany 72 hours before the war. The former Sequoia chairman on outsiders and the one interview question that makes founders cry.
· 4 min read
Michael Moritz grew up in Wales, the son of Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany. After Oxford, a half-hour meeting with Daily Telegraph editor Bill Deedes convinced him to move to America, where Time hired him in his early 20s and he wrote books on Apple and on Lee Iacocca's turnaround of Chrysler. Don Valentine took a chance on him at Sequoia in the mid-1980s even though he had no technical background, and Moritz went on to lead the firm from the mid-1990s until 2012, backing companies including Yahoo, Google, PayPal, and Stripe. He now runs a family foundation, cofounded the San Francisco Standard, advises Sequoia Heritage, paints, and has written a new book about his family's history. These signals are from an interview that Patrick O'Shaughnessy did with Michael Moritz on Invest Like the Best.
