Read August 9th for Free Online

to read to her, and that feeling is mutual. Last week I took a photo of her resting her head on Maggie’s little baby bump. It’s priceless.
    Work continues to be an extremely rewarding challenge. Personal computers seem to be driving everything and Rogers Schmidt is investing heavily in some very exciting new software companies. I wonder if you have a computer and if you understand the difference between software and hardware. If not, here’s a little help. Software is a program that performs a task on a computer and hardware is the device connected to the computer that allows the software to function. Hope that makes sense. We’re investing in software companies because they’re much more profitable than hardware companies. In fact, a software company we helped fund a year and a half ago was just acquired by Microsoft.
    Well, Caroline got her college fund started off with 100 shares of Apple. They became a public company on Dec. 12th and created more millionaires, 300 (employees with stock or stock options and early investors) than any company in history. Word here on the street is that a couple of venture capitalists actually made hundreds of millions. Not that we need any more monetary incentive in our business but that’s serious money.
    A couple of months ago I took a tour of our dozen portfolio companies spending a couple of days at each. It was a wonderful experience to actually see how business is evolving. The offices are as different in décor as they are in employee dress. There still are the business types who wear a coat and tie but there’s many more, primarily techies, who dress casual, and by casual I mean jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. When I see that it takes me back to Stanford and my brilliant nerd buddy Jeff. The tech guys also decorate their cubicles or office space with unique individuality. One of the electrical engineers decorated his office as a beach. I know that’s probably hard to visualize but it was sort of cool. Bottom line, whatever makes these guys happy is good for business.
    Surprisingly I’ve become good friends with my networking buddy Gary. We were reconnected because our firms are both involved in funding a new startup. His divorce was finally settled and he seems committed to his kids. He’s a bright guy from a small town in Idaho who married his high school sweetheart when they were both nineteen. They had three children in rapid succession, before Gary and his wife, Cheryl, were 24. Nineteen is awful young to get married and certainly their marriage would have had a better chance if they still lived in their small Idaho hometown. Instead, Gary found himself in Silicon Valley and the middle of the tech explosion. When you understand his story you can see how his life unraveled.
    Not surprisingly the two women he had affairs with are long gone. He accepts responsibility for his destructive behavior and has become sort of a spokesman for the evils of “too much, too soon.” Also, it helps that Maggie really likes him. Guess you can call him my best friend in the Valley.
    Although Maggie and I like to get down to LA whenever we can it’s been difficult lately with Caroline and the baby to be. Our spare bedrooms are getting plenty of use. Between our families and friends we seem to have very welcome guests almost every weekend. Maggie loves to entertain, much more than me. My specialty is firing up the barbecue.
    Even though I’m a Democrat I have to give President Reagan credit for negotiating the release of the hostages held in Iran for fourteen months. Also, I like that he put the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, on the Supreme Court. His big test is still what he does to control our 10% inflation and terribly high interest rates.
    Tess, I hope life finds you happy and healthy. I regularly ask the mailman who delivers to our office if the rules for forwarding mail are the same. I choose to believe you are still receiving my letters just as I choose to believe what