August 9th (6 page)

It turns out Gary was having an affair with one of the gals. This wasn’t going to be a coming to Jesus talk with Gary. These ladies wanted to party. I knew only trouble would come if I stayed. The problem was Gary had driven and my car was back at the office so I called a cab.

The girls were nice, too nice. Gary’s friend was on his lap in minutes and the other gal was having fun reaching her hand into my pants pocket as she whispered in my ear, “What’s that I feel in your pocket? It’s getting bigger and harder. I’ll bet it wants to come out and play. Let’s find a more comfortable place and I’m sure I can help you with your problem.”

Obviously, these weren’t ordinary girls. I think the term is “escort.” Luckily, my cab soon arrived. The temptation
was very enticing, but I didn’t even want to know her name. I didn’t fall into the trap, said my goodbyes and in twenty minutes was home with my girls.

On the drive home I convinced myself I had nothing to hide. I did call a cab and came home as soon as I discovered what was happening. I walked into the house intending to tell Maggie everything, but she was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her.

Gary called me the next day at work to apologize. He was sorry for putting me in such a compromising situation, but was shocked when I told him I was going to tell Maggie what happened. He was relieved when I told him she was asleep when I got home. He couldn’t believe any wife would believe the story. Maybe that’s why he’s getting a divorce. Surprisingly, at the end of our conversation he says, “She really liked you.” I said the only thing I could, “Goodbye Gary.”

Getting back to the business world, everything is great at Rogers Schmidt and because the housing market is so hot we’re going to sell our house and buy a bigger three or four bedroom after the first of the year. We love where we’re living and real estate up here is a great investment. Speaking of investments, word on the street is that Apple is about to IPO. (Go public) Once they do I’m going to buy 100 shares and put them in a special college fund for Caroline. College tuition keeps getting more expensive and we want to be sure she’ll be able to pick her school assuming she gets good grades.

Caroline’s parents are thinking she needs a brother or sister. We’d like to have our kids close in age and a bigger family is the reason for buying a larger home.

It looks like we’re going to have an actor in the White House. With the Iran hostage crisis still looming and a declining economy, President Carter looks like easy pickings for our former governor, Ronald Reagan. I’m not nearly as political as I was in college and since most of my associates are conservative Republicans, concerned about taxes and government intervention in business, I keep my old liberal activism quiet.

Having the little one at home makes it difficult for us to go out but we did get a chance to see a great concert while Maggie’s parents were visiting. We saw The Who at the Oakland Coliseum Arena in April. We hadn’t seen them before and they were fantastic especially guitarist Pete Townsend. He does this big circular movement with his hand and arm. We loved Pinball Wizard, Won’t Get Fooled Again and My Generation.

I hope I’ve been able to stay current on your address changes. My mailman keeps telling me if I haven’t received the letters back then someone is receiving them. I hope that’s you.

Hi Tess,

It’s a good thing we bought a bigger house because we’re having another baby!

Caroline is going to have a brother! Maggie’s due in the middle of December and her pregnancy, so far, has been relatively smooth. The timing is perfect since the Valley pretty much shuts down between Thanksgiving and New Years and I’ll be able to take most of December off.

Times sure have changed from my childhood. I don’t remember the color of a baby’s room being so important, but Maggie’s been talking with her mother for weeks trying to decide on the right color combinations which of course affects the colors of all the baby accessories. After all, friends and family need to know those details to buy shower gifts.

Caroline is utterly amazing! She seems to do something for the first time almost every day. She still loves
her disco and now dances to it. Strangely the other music she loves is Neil Young. Must be his raspy voice? I’ll take credit for that since Neil is one of my all time favorites. She also seems to be curious about almost everything, especially when she can put it in her mouth. And she loves Dad to read to her, and that feeling is mutual. Last week I took a photo of her resting her head on Maggie’s little baby bump. It’s priceless.

Work continues to be an extremely rewarding challenge. Personal computers seem to be driving everything and Rogers Schmidt is investing heavily in some very exciting new software companies. I wonder if you have a computer and if you understand the difference between software and hardware. If not, here’s a little help. Software is a program that performs a task on a computer and hardware is the device connected to the computer that allows the software to function. Hope that makes sense. We’re investing in software companies because they’re much more profitable than hardware companies. In fact, a software company we helped fund a year and a half ago was just acquired by Microsoft.

Well, Caroline got her college fund started off with 100 shares of Apple. They became a public company on Dec. 12th and created more millionaires, 300 (employees with stock or stock options and early investors) than any company in history. Word here on the street is that a couple of venture capitalists actually made hundreds of millions. Not that we need any more monetary incentive in our business but that’s serious money.

A couple of months ago I took a tour of our dozen portfolio companies spending a couple of days at each. It was a wonderful experience to actually see how business is evolving. The offices are as different in décor as they are in employee dress. There still are the business types who wear a coat and tie but there’s many more, primarily techies, who dress casual, and by casual I mean jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. When I see that it takes me back to Stanford and my brilliant nerd buddy Jeff. The tech guys also decorate their cubicles or office space with unique individuality. One of the electrical engineers decorated his office as a beach. I know that’s probably hard to visualize but it was sort of cool. Bottom line, whatever makes these guys happy is good for business.

Surprisingly I’ve become good friends with my networking buddy Gary. We were reconnected because our firms are both involved in funding a new startup. His divorce was finally settled and he seems committed to his kids. He’s a bright guy from a small town in Idaho who married his high school sweetheart when they were both nineteen. They had three children in rapid succession, before Gary and his wife, Cheryl, were 24. Nineteen is awful young to get married and certainly their marriage would have had a better chance if they still lived in their small Idaho hometown. Instead, Gary found himself in Silicon Valley and the middle of the tech explosion. When you understand his story you can see how his life unraveled.

Not surprisingly the two women he had affairs with are long gone. He accepts responsibility for his destructive behavior and has become sort of a spokesman for the evils of “too much, too soon.” Also, it helps that Maggie really likes him. Guess you can call him my best friend in the Valley.

Although Maggie and I like to get down to LA whenever we can it’s been difficult lately with Caroline and the baby to be. Our spare bedrooms are getting plenty of use. Between our families and friends we seem to have very welcome guests almost every weekend. Maggie loves to entertain, much more than me. My specialty is firing up the barbecue.

Even though I’m a Democrat I have to give President Reagan credit for negotiating the release of the hostages held in Iran for fourteen months. Also, I like that he put the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, on the Supreme Court. His big test is still what he does to control our 10% inflation and terribly high interest rates.

Tess, I hope life finds you happy and healthy. I regularly ask the mailman who delivers to our office if the rules for forwarding mail are the same. I choose to believe you are still receiving my letters just as I choose to believe what happened to us in Anaheim twelve years ago was not an accident.

Hi Tess,

On the morning of December 14th we welcomed Benjamin Sullivan Brewster to the world and our family.

His arrival came off without a hitch and as with Caroline I was in the delivery room trying to help Maggie. This time I knew what to expect. As with Caroline, Maggie’s parents came up to help out and this time we had a guest room for them.

I’m so excited to have a son. I absolutely adore my wonderful daughter but a son has just been a different experience for me. I can’t wait to teach him how to build things or how to ride a bike or throw a baseball. I’m so, so lucky to have such a beautiful family.

There is nothing sweeter than watching Caroline with her baby brother and I’ve tried to capture everything on film. Ben seems to be a lot different than his sister was. He’s quieter, not as animated and much more serious. Now that we have two children I can’t imagine
my world without them. Nothing in my life can compare to being a Father.

Business is going crazy. It seems like there’s another new company started almost every day. We’ve been looking into two, Sun Microsystems and Symantec. Sun was founded by three former Stanford students and is building a workstation combining a Unix Operating System and Motorola processors. Symantec is working on all sorts of artificial intelligence technology including databases. Those descriptions of what they do are directly from their Company materials and I’m glad you can’t ask me to explain them further. Obviously I need to do more homework.

The latest “hot new technology” seems to be networking. Instead of connecting people we’re talking about connecting computers. At the end of June we heard a brilliant engineer at a Stanford conference talk about how one day everyone will be connected and eventually without any wires. I spoke with this engineer after his presentation and he’s scheduled to give a presentation at our office in September. What he talks about could be a game changer or as we call it up here a “paradigm shift.”