Founder (1972) at Sequoia Capital · Joined 1972
View Live Interactive Profile →Don Valentine founded Sequoia Capital in 1972, before the terms Silicon Valley and venture capital had been coined. He studied chemistry at Fordham University and worked as a sales engineer at Raytheon, then spent seven years at Fairchild Semiconductor before becoming founding VP of Sales and Marketing at National Semiconductor. At Sequoia he backed Atari and Apple Computer, serving on both boards, and oversaw investments in Oracle, LSI Logic, Microchip Technology, Linear Technology, Network Appliance, Electronic Arts, Sierra Semiconductor and Cisco Systems, where he was chairman from the firm's original 1987 investment. He died in 2019 at age 87.