Venture Chronicles: Setting the Record Straight

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28

Yesterday in VentureWire there was a piece written by John Letzing about my leaving SAP Ventures. I did talk with John, as did Lisa Reeves, and while I don't dispute the statements I do take issue with the way they were assembled and the conclusions that were drawn.

Here's what he wrote:

SAP Ventures' Jeff Nolan, Weary Of The Game, Steps Aside

By John Letzing

11/2/2005

Jeff Nolan, a general partner with SAP Ventures, has left the German software giant's VC arm to refocus his energy on corporate strategy.

Nolan is widely known within the venture capital community for making rather candid comments on his venture capital blog. He announced last week on the blog that his final day with SAP Ventures was Oct. 15.

In his eight years with SAP Ventures, Nolan said he took part in some 73 deals. But lately, he said, "All the deals started looking the same."

"I'm seeing a lot of infrastructure stuff that's going to 'change the world', or applications where the best hope is to get acquired," he said.

A general weariness with the conventions of venture capital also contributed to his exit, Nolan said. "Venture deals are pretty much boilerpate," he said, "that was an equal part of it."

Lisa Reeves, senior vice president at SAP Ventures, said that while Nolan had no VC experience prior to coming on board, his replacement will.

"He (Nolan) really grew into the role," Reeves said, but added, "We'll be bringing in someone who has venture experience." Reeves said she intends to announce a replacement by December of this year.

"Change is always good," Reeves said.

Nolan said he will now turn his attention to the operations side of the business, "pulling a lever and seeing what happens." He said he now has a single goal, as part of the company's 'Apollo' unit, assembled to beat back competition: "Kill Oracle. It's that simple."

Oracle Corp. is the number two business software maker in the world, behind Walldorf, Germany-based SAP.

Ironically, Nolan said his last deal, a $4 million Series B round for Socialtext, an enterprise 'wiki', or user-contributed content, service, was his most satisfying to date.

"My last official day was Oct. 15, and that's the day our funds wired," Nolan said, a bit ruefully. "I was looking forward to that."

First and foremost, yes I do think all venture deals start to look the same after a while but that's not necessarily a bad thing and it certainly doesn't mean they aren't interesting anymore. Two of the most recent deals I have done, T3Ci and Socialtext, are also 2 of the most interesting investments I have made... and yes, even though they are in radically different technologies and business segments, many of the challenges they face are in fact very similar, like hiring good people, building a sales team with a repeatbable sales model, pricing, attracting quality investment, etc.

Letzing also failed to include the part of the discussion we had where we talked about how the enterprise software, and tech business in general, was chaning on many levels from technology to business model to sales. A major component of my decision to leave Ventures was to get back in the mud doing this stuff in order to build my own skills to the point to where I could get to the next level. As I wrote myself, it's one thing to sit in a board meeting talking about this stuff, it's another altogether to actually be responsible for executing it. I want, indeed crave, the challenge of execution.

The second half of my distress about Letzing's piece is that it creates the perception that Lisa Reeves and I departed on less than awesome terms. The very simple fact of the matter is that in addition to having a bunch of respect for Lisa's abilities, she and I are good friends as well. When I told her that I was going to leave she asked me what characteristics my replacement should have. I told her that whoever replaced me should come from the private equity business. The entire Ventures team consists of people who came from ops backgrounds and it's my opinion that bringing in someone from another firm would be positive from a fresh perspective and diversification. I also emphasized that change is good because refreshing and regenerating any team is not only good but necessary, and seeing as how I have the longest history at Ventures it made sense for me to initiate that... walking my own talk so to speak.

Letzing also created the impression that there was an experience deficit, which is hardly the case when you look at how many investments we have executed on and how our return numbers stack up. So when Lisa and I both said "someone with experience" the intention behind that statement was about driving improvement in practices and evolving the model, which is entirely how best practices in any business are developed.

We have had a fantastic transition over the last 2 months and I continue to help in recruiting my own replacement, interviewing candidates and providing assistance whenever asked. If you know Lisa you really wouldn't be surprised by this, she's simply one of the most collegial and professional people I have ever worked, or could ever work with.

The simple truth is that this whole VentureWire episode and what I'm writing here is a gnat on the back of a flea, it's really not important and by this time next week will be long forgotten. Prior to blogging, I would have emailed Letzing, bitched to my friends, and stewed quietly, but because I have a blog with some reach I do have the ability to set the record straight and that's exactly what I hope I have done in the minds of all that read that piece yesterday.

On a final note, I'm tired of people writing about my blog and boiling it down to being known for rather candid comments." On occasion I do write about something substantive.

Venture Chronicles

by Jeff Nolan

Syndicate

February 2006

Admin

New Blog

Subscribe w/Newsgator

Google Search

About

Nov 03, 2005

Setting the Record Straight

Comments