C. Richard Kramlich, Early Investor in Silicon Valley, Dies at 89
He was among the first backers of Apple Computer and 3Com, earning windfalls, but it was his humaneness that distinguished him from other venture capitalists.
He was among the first backers of Apple Computer and 3Com, earning windfalls, but it was his humaneness that distinguished him from other venture capitalists.
C. Richard Kramlich, an early investor in Silicon Valley who co-founded the investment giant New Enterprise Associates, helping to fuel the booming tech industry, died on Saturday at his home in San Francisco. He was 89.
His death was announced by New Enterprise Associates.
Mr. Kramlich (pronounced CRAM-lick), whose career spanned more than five decades, was among the earliest backers of Apple Computer; the software companies Silicon Graphics and Macromedia; and the computer networking companies Juniper Networks and 3Com, whose founders invented the Ethernet.
He co-founded his own firm, New Enterprise Associates, or NEA, building it from an initial $16 million fund in the 1970s to one that now oversees investments of nearly $26 billion.
But he stood out among Silicon Valley’s sea of swashbuckling financiers because of his grace and kindness, said Scott Sandell, the chief investment officer and executive chairman of NEA. “He believed the venture business was a people business, and he acted accordingly,” he said.
Charles Richard Kramlich was born on April 27, 1935, in Green Bay, Wis. His father, Irvin Kramlich, was a grocer who started a chain of 25 food stores that Kroger bought in 1955; his mother, Dorothy (Earl) Kramlich, was an aeronautical engineer who later oversaw the household.
When he was 13, Dick followed in his father’s entrepreneurial footsteps, starting his own “little lightbulb company,” he said in a 2015 interview with the Computer History Museum. “My father encouraged me to do it if I used my own money, and so I bought half a train car worth of lightbulbs from Sylvania Corporation” and resold them from his bedroom.
