Val Vaden

Managing Member, Outfitter Ventures

I went to Stanford, I did an internship at IBM, I worked at Bain, then the Brookings Institution, then went to HBS for the first year in 1985 but stopped out to crack into the venture business. Did that more or less successfully for the next five years, finished my MBA at Stanford in 1991, then worked with some angel investors to buy a software company, that went great and after selling that company, I started Benchmark Capital with Bob Kagle and Bruce Dunlevie (Andy Rachleff and Kevin Harvey a bit later). We made a bunch of money on eBay and other deals (notably Cacheflow, aka now BlueCoat Systems, the second highest IRR investment in Benchmark !). Then I partnered with Alex Slusky to start Vector Capital, and though we were a bit early in the tech buyout space, it ended up working out quite well for us and Alex is doing a great job growing the Vector franchise. I am now semi-retired, paying lots of attention to my family and spending the rest of my time on Outfitter Ventures (www.outfitterventures.com). If you've read this far, thanks!