C. Richard Kramlich, an early investor in Silicon Valley who co-founded the funding big New Enterprise Associates, serving to to gasoline the booming tech business, died on Saturday at his house in San Francisco. He was 89.
His demise was introduced by New Enterprise Associates.
Mr. Kramlich (pronounced CRAM-lick), whose profession spanned greater than 5 a long time, was among the many earliest backers of Apple Laptop; the software program firms Silicon Graphics and Macromedia; and the pc networking firms Juniper Networks and 3Com, whose founders invented the Ethernet.
He co-founded his personal agency, New Enterprise Associates, or NEA, constructing it from an preliminary $16 million fund within the Seventies to 1 that now oversees investments of almost $26 billion.
However he stood out amongst Silicon Valley’s sea of swashbuckling financiers due to his grace and kindness, mentioned Scott Sandell, the chief funding officer and government chairman of NEA. “He believed the enterprise enterprise was a individuals enterprise, and he acted accordingly,” he mentioned.
Charles Richard Kramlich was born on April 27, 1935, in Inexperienced Bay, Wis. His father, Irvin Kramlich, was a grocer who began a sequence of 25 meals shops that Kroger purchased in 1955; his mom, Dorothy (Earl) Kramlich, was an aeronautical engineer who later oversaw the family.
When he was 13, Dick adopted in his father’s entrepreneurial footsteps, beginning his personal “little lightbulb firm,” he mentioned in a 2015 interview with the Laptop Historical past Museum. “My father inspired me to do it if I used my very own cash, and so I purchased half a practice automobile price of lightbulbs from Sylvania Company” and resold them from his bed room.
He added: “I come from three generations of entrepreneurs, and when you get it in your DNA, all the things else is boring.”
He attended Northwestern College, graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in Russian historical past in 1957, and went on to serve within the Strategic Air Command division of the Air Drive. After receiving a grasp’s diploma from Harvard Enterprise Faculty, he went to work for Kroger, after which discovered the ropes of investing whereas working for a agency in Boston.
In 1969, he landed a coveted job at Arthur Rock & Co., one of many first funding companies to make high-risk bets on unproven know-how start-ups. He beat out greater than a thousand different candidates, he mentioned within the 2015 interview, by sending Mr. Rock a handwritten letter expressing his want to seek out “an even bigger life on the market.”
In 1977, he began NEA with Chuck Newhall and Frank Bonsal, two buyers he had met in Boston. Persuading others to again their new fund took greater than a yr, and through that point Mr. Kramlich met a pair of entrepreneurs who had been each named Steve (Jobs and Wozniak).
Their firm, Apple Laptop, was inferior to two different private pc firms available in the market, Mr. Kramlich mentioned in 2015. However their sense of design and entrepreneurial spark had been spectacular. “That they had pizazz,” he mentioned, “the place the opposite two firms had been extra engineering oriented.”
He felt compelled to speculate and used his personal cash to take action. The payoff got here three years later, in 1980, when Apple went public. That funding made it doable for Mr. Kramlich to purchase a 1927 Tudor home within the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco; he had bronze apples normal because the entrance gate’s doorknobs to remind him of the windfall. (Final yr, he listed the home on the market for $19.5 million.)
Not lengthy after, he met Pamela Kay Palmer by a mutual buddy; they married in 1981.
Enterprise capital investing is designed to soak up many losses in pursuit of 1 home-run deal, leaving a graveyard of failed start-ups alongside the best way. However Mr. Kramlich was identified for sticking with struggling investments lengthy after others had deserted them.
“He used to say, ‘By no means say die,’” Mr. Sandell mentioned.
Within the early Nineteen Eighties, Forethought, the start-up behind PowerPoint software program, was about to expire of cash, and NEA’s companions refused to pony up extra. So Mr. Kramlich satisfied his spouse that they need to pause work on the home they had been constructing on Stinson Seashore and use the money to maintain the corporate alive as a substitute. The gamble paid off: In 1987, Microsoft purchased Forethought for $14 million, and PowerPoint went on to develop into one of many world’s best-known software program packages.
Monetary Engines, an funding advisory start-up backed by NEA, took 18 years to go public and “went by 5 completely different enterprise fashions,” mentioned Jeff Maggioncalda, the corporate’s chief government. NEA, he added, patiently held its shares your entire time.
Because of that endurance, and to Mr. Kramlich’s kindness, chief executives he had fired or threatened to fireside by no means stopped eager to work with him.
“Folks don’t depart a relationship with Dick with any anger,” mentioned James Clark, a founding father of the pc software program and {hardware} firm Silicon Graphics, whose board of administrators Mr. Kramlich served on. “He’s only a essentially good man.”
In 2002, Mr. Kramlich advised Mr. Maggioncalda that he can be pushed out by the top of the yr if issues didn’t flip round. However Mr. Kramlich’s supply impressed belief moderately than worry, Mr. Maggioncalda recalled: “He mentioned it with a calmness and a supportiveness.” The corporate recovered, and Mr. Maggioncalda led it by an preliminary public providing in 2010.
After Mr. Kramlich retired from NEA in 2012, he continued to pursue a ardour for artwork amassing. He and Ms. Kramlich had been among the many first personal collectors to concentrate on new media because it emerged as an artwork kind within the late Nineteen Eighties, they usually amassed an intensive assortment that emphasised audio and pc artwork, video, movie and photographic slides. Their assortment of movies and installations grew to greater than 300 items — so massive that they constructed a three-level house in Napa Valley to show it.
Along with Ms. Kramlich, he’s survived by two youngsters, Christina and Richard Kramlich; a stepdaughter, Mary Donna Meredith; and 6 grandchildren. A son, Peter, died in 2024. Mr. Kramlich was married twice earlier than, to Deborah (Durbrow) Kramlich, whom he divorced in 1966, and to Lynne (Shamburger) Kramlich, who died in 1981.
In retirement, Mr. Kramlich continued to mentor founders and buyers. He additionally began a brand new agency, Inexperienced Bay Ventures, with Anthony Schiller, a liquefied pure fuel entrepreneur. The agency’s investments embody Databricks, the A.I. knowledge firm; Dropbox, the file storage firm; and Xiaomi, the patron electronics firm.
Of their 12 years of working collectively, Mr. Schiller mentioned in a press release, he discovered rather a lot from Mr. Kramlich.
“There might be loads of well-deserved recognition for Dick’s legendary profession,” he mentioned. “However he was simply as extraordinary as an individual. He taught me about dreaming huge, loyalty, satisfaction and alignment.”
