Okay, now that we've shared that with the group, the question becomes, How does one join this priestly caste? After all, there are no graduate schools of venture, no fellowships at Kleiner Perkins--so what's an aspiring John Doerr to do? To answer that question I decided to pay a visit to Adam Dell, younger brother of guess who. Now Adam, 30, is admittedly somewhat out of the norm--besides his famous last name, he's fairly new to the game, works out of New York City, and is probably as wired as most venture capitalists twice his age. Whether he will be to the VC biz what Mike is to the PC biz remains to be seen, but it's safe to say that Adam appears to be making all the right moves.

So how does one become a VC? "You've got to do whatever it takes," says Dell. "I was working in Austin as a lawyer, and a guy told me to get in my car and drive to California, sleep in the car if you have to. Then, once I got there, John Hummer [he of VC powerhouse Hummer Winblad] told me to crawl in any window." His pitch? "I told them I'd done a fair amount of work in Austin in this area--that I wasn't a prepackaged Silicon Valley clone. That I'm a bright guy and I work hard." At that point, he says, his name was a disadvantage because there was a presumption that people were opening doors for him. "That was very much not the case," he says. "I fought like hell to get my job." Well, I don't doubt that, but methinks the Dell doth protest a little too much.

Dell finally scored a job with Enterprise Partners in L.A., where he remained for a year or so before moving to Crosspoint Venture Partners, a bigger-name operation in Silicon Valley. After just 18 months at Crosspoint he decided to form his own firm, Impact Venture Partners, raising $100 million in about 2 1/2 weeks from the likes of his brother, the Hewlett Foundation, CSFB tech superbanker Frank Quattrone, the Common Fund, and John Mumford of Crosspoint. His name, it seems, was no longer such an impediment.

Dell then moved his operation to New York because he believed that the East Coast wasn't as picked over as Silicon Valley. Makes sense. Alley or Valley, however, it's the same as far as the theme du jour goes. Impact, like every other VC firm, it seems, now eschews B2C startups for B2Bs (though both, of course, are hurting right now). So far Impact has invested $65 million in 11 Net companies--two of which, GoAmerica and Opus360, have already gone public. PartMiner.com, an electronics component exchange that also boasts Roger McNamee as an investor, is soon to follow. Says Dell: "We'll probably invest in another three or four, then raise another fund." Nice work if you can get it.

So, folks, what's it really like to be a VC? "It's like having 11 parties at the same time. And there's always three things going wrong," Dell says. "At one of the parties the band's not playing. At another there's no food or the guests didn't show up. And you have to fix those problems. The phone rings at any moment, the VP of engineering has quit or sales are weak or whatever, and you have to charge in and help solve the problem." Hmm. Throwing 11 parties at once. Sounds good. Got any openings?

True Value
Dennis Jean-Jacques is one of the more junior analysts over at value house Franklin Mutual--Michael Price's old shop--yet Jean-Jacques has come up with some of the firm's more compelling picks lately. Seems he has found a new angle on value stock picking, what he calls event-driven investing. "I look for companies that either have announced, or I suspect will announce, some sort of initiative that I think will enhance shareholder value," he says. Like? "Like a spinoff, a breakup, a restructuring. But there are no sure things," says Jean-Jacques. "You always have to do your homework."

Shortly before Price retired in 1998, Jean-Jacques brought Varian Associates to his attention. Varian had announced it was splitting itself up, but the market paid little attention. Jean-Jacques persuaded his boss to pick up VAR at $33 a share, arguing that one could get the company's semiconductor business essentially for free. Now the pieces are worth $140 a share. Unfortunately Franklin Mutual sold too early (in the 40s and 50s). "It was a home run that we thought was a double," moans Jean-Jacques.

He's had similar success investing in Herman Miller and Thermo Electron. And most recently he has helped the firm target Maytag. "This is a very valuable company with a strong brand and little debt. They are buying back stock. Management is under fire, and it recently lost a fight to get a super majority on its latest proxy. We believe it's a takeout candidate." Yep, that would be an event, all right. As for Franklin Mutual's bottom line, well, all its funds are on the plus side year to date. Thanks in part to guys like Jean-Jacques, value investing a la Franklin may finally be coming back.

Loose Change
How far will Greenspan go? How much more will he tighten? Is the man willing to reduce the entire bull market to rubble? Maybe not. Sure, Greenie knows the market is now down year to date, though he emphasizes that it's up for the past 52 weeks. Where are we today? As of late May the Wilshire (Alan's fave) is up 4% for the past 52 weeks and the Nasdaq is up 32%. When the latter starts hitting single digits, maybe the man will take his fat foot off the brake. Watch Andy Serwer on CNN's In the Money at 11 a.m. EST.

Issue date: June 12, 2000
Vol. 141, No. 12

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