Norman Winarsky

Like a great venture, this book was made possible only through the efforts of a remarkable team. They contributed their talent, wisdom, and enthusiasm along with decades of experience. It is to these people that I owe all.

1. David Liddle—who has been my sensei, sharing his deep and broad experience as a researcher, entrepreneur, CEO, and venture capitalist
2. Curt Carlson—for his partnership and friendship throughout the span of our entire careers, and for his contributions to the development of the framework for building great ventures
3. Bill Mark—who, as president of the information computing sciences division at SRI, has shared this journey with me and helped create many of our successes
4. All the researchers at SRI and the RCA Laboratories—who have developed many of the technologies that really have changed the world
5. Henry Kressel—my coauthor, whose experiences as a researcher and venture capitalist complemented my own experiences as a researcher and company builder
6. Venture capitalists Gary Morgenthaler, Yogen Dalal, Vinod Khosla, Mike Moritz, Shawn Carolan, and Solina Chau—who have been great friends and supporters of SRI and our ventures group
7. Tim Sullivan—editorial director of the Harvard Business School Press, whose invaluable support and editorial work made this book possible
8. Robert Eberhart—assistant professor of organizational theory at Santa Clara University and fellow of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, who has provided great support in helping me understand the academic research on entrepreneurship relating to many of the book’s principles
9. My wife, Lisbeth—who has been my lifelong supporter and partner through all these experiences, and whose critical comments and suggestions have made this a better book
10. My daughter, Hanne—who inspired me to write this book. Hanne’s experience as an editor and writer, and her own talent and enthusiasm were a constant source of support.
11. My sons, David and Peter—who are entrepreneurs in their own right and gave me confidence and help in writing this book

Henry Kressel

This book would not have been possible without the experience I gained as a senior partner at Warburg Pincus, one of the world’s most successful private equity and venture capital firms. Since the 1970s, Warburg Pincus has expanded internationally, with offices in London, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai, and São Paulo, Brazil. The firm has invested more than $50 billion in companies located in thirty countries in a wide range of industries. The funded companies have ranged from start-ups to those having revenues in the billions of dollars.

My investment strategy and operating principles for building business value were developed during my work in a number of industrial sectors differentiated by the use of new technology. In that process I had the benefit of great professional relationships with remarkable entrepreneurs and very talented partners. These include John L. Vogelstein, president of the firm until 2002; Joseph P. Landy and Charles R. Kaye (co-CEOs of the firm since 2002); William H. Janeway (vice chairman between 2001 and 2006, and closely involved with the technology investment strategy of the firm), Joseph Schull, Chang Q. Sun, David Li, Henry Schacht, Steven G. Schneider, Christopher H. Turner, Patrick T. Hackett, James Neary, Mark M. Colodny, Alex Berzofsky, Cary J. Davis, Raj Kushwaha, Vishnu Menon, Chandler Reedy, Justin Sadrian, Adarsh Sarma, Michael Graff, In Seon Hwang, Peter R. Kagan, David B. Krieger, James R. Levy, John K. Rowan, Julian Cheng, Bo Bai, Stan Raatz, Frank Brochin, Jeffrey A. Harris, Bilge Ogut, Barry Taylor, Beau Vrolyk, and Tim Curt.

It has been a great pleasure working with Norman on this book as it brings together his extensive company-building experience at SRI with my experience in private equity and venture capital investment.

My wife, Rina, provided great support during the writing of this book and made important critical comments that have been incorporated. I am also indebted to my children Aron, Kim, Lois, and Zeev for their continuing encouragement.

Along with Norman, I am greatly indebted to Tim Sullivan, editorial director of the Harvard Business School Press, for his constant support and editorial work that made possible the completion of this book.

Finally, I am very grateful to Tina Nuss for her extraordinary work in preparing the manuscript.