C. Richard Kramlich, an early investor in Silicon Valley who was co-founder of the investment giant New Enterprise Associates, who helped to feed the flowering technical industry, died on Saturday in his house in Oakville, California, in the Napa Valley. He was 89.
His death was announced by new Enterprise Associates.
Mr Kramlich (pronounced Cram-Lick), whose career included himself for more than five decades, was one of the earliest donors of Apple Computer; the software companies Silicon Graphics and Macromedia; and the computer network companies Juniper Networks and 3COM, the founders of which have invented Ethernet technology.
He was co-founder of his own company, New Enterprise Associates, or NEA, and built it from an initial fund of $ 16 million in the 1970s to one that now supervises investments of almost $ 26 billion.
But he stood out between Silicon Valley's Sea or Swashbuckling financiers because of his grace and kindness, said Scott Sandell, the Chief Investment Officer and executive chairman of NEA. “He believed that the venture business was a folk company and he acted accordingly,” he said.
Charles Richard Kramlich was born on April 27, 1935 in Green Bay, Wis. His father, Irvin Kramlich, was a grocer who started a chain of 25 food stores bought Kroger in 1955; His mother, Dorothy (Earl) Kramlich, was an aviation engineer who later supervised the household.
When he was 13, Dick followed in the entrepreneurial footsteps of his father and started his own 'Little Lightbulb Company', he said in an interview in 2015 with the Computer History Museum. “My father encouraged me to do it when I used my own money, and so I bought half a train car from light bulbs from Sylvania Corporation” and sold them out from his bedroom.
He added: “I come from three generations of entrepreneurs, and as soon as you have it in your DNA, everything else is boring.”
He went to Northwestern University, graduated with a bachelor's degree in Russian history in 1957 and then served in the Strategic Air Command Division of the Air Force. After obtaining a master's degree at Harvard Business School, he went to work for Kroger and then learned the ropes of investments while working for a company in Boston.
In 1969 he landed a coveted job at Arthur Rock & Co., one of the first investment companies that held risky bets on unquested technological startups. He defeated more than a thousand other applicants, he said in the 2015 interview, by Mr. Rock to send a handwritten letter that expressed his wish to find 'a larger life outside'.
In 1977 he started Nea with Chuck Newhall and Frank Bonsal, two investors he had met in Boston. Convincing others to support their new fund took more than a year, and at that time Mr. Kramlich met a few entrepreneurs who both were called Steve (Jobs and Wozniak).
Their company, Apple Computer, was not as good as two other personal computer companies on the market, Mr Kramlich said in 2015. But their sense of design and entrepreneurial stable were impressive. “They had Pizazz,” he said, “where the other two companies were more engineering oriented.”
He felt forced to invest and used his own money to do this. The payment came three years later, in 1980, when Apple became public. That investment made it possible for Mr Kramlich to buy a Tudor House from 1927 in the Presidio Heights district in San Francisco; He had formed bronze apples as the door buttons of the Voorpoort to remind him of the windfall. (Last year he mentioned the house for sale for $ 19.5 million.)
Not long after, he met Pamela Kay Palmer through a common friend; They married in 1981.
Venture capital investment is designed to absorb many losses in the pursuit of one home-tied deal, leaving a cemetery of failed start-ups on the way. But Mr Kramlich was known to hold on to struggling investments long after others had left them.
“He always said,” Never say die, “said Mr. Sandell.
In the early 1980s, Foraddened, the start-up behind PowerPoint software, was about to touch money and the partners of Nea refused more pony. So Mr Kramlich convinced his wife that they had to pause the work on the house that they build on Stinson Beach and use the money to keep the company alive instead. De Gamble has paid off: Microsoft Fordent bought $ 14 million in 1987, and PowerPoint became one of the world's most famous software programs in the world.
Financial Engines, a start-up of investment advice, supported by NEA, lasted 18 years to become public and “went through five different business models,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, the director of the company. Nea, he added, patiently held his shares all the time.
Thanks to that patience, and to the friendliness of Mr. Kramlich, chief executives he had fired or threatened to shoot, never stopped working with him.
“People don't leave a relationship with a dick with some anger,” said James Clark, a founder of the computer software and hardware company Silicon Graphics, whose board Mr Kramlich served. “He is just a fundamentally good man.”
In 2002, Mr Kramlich told Mr. Maggioncalda that he would be expressed by the end of the year if things were not to turn around. But the delivery of Mr Kramlich inspired confidence instead of fear, Mr. Maggioncalda remembered: “He said it with a calmness and support.” The company recovered and Mr. Maggioncalda led the first public offer in 2010.
After Mr Kramlich retired from Nea in 2012, he continued to pursue a passion for collecting art. He and Mrs. Kramlich were among the first private collectors who concentrated on new media, because it came forward in the late 1980s as an art form, and they collected an extensive collection that emphasized audio and computer art, video, film and photographic slides . Their collection of videos and installations grew to more than 300 pieces so large that they built a house on three levels in Oakville to show it.
In addition to Mrs. Kramlich, he is survived by two children, Christina and Richard Kramlich; A stepdaughter, Mary Donna Meredith; And six grandchildren. A son, Peter, died in 2024. Mr Kramlich was married twice before to Deborah (Durbrow) Kramlich, whom he divorced in 1966, and to Lynne (Shamburger) Kramlich, who died in 1981.
In retirement, Mr Kramlich continued to accompany founders and investors. He also started a new company, Green Bay Ventures, with Anthony Schiller, a liquid natural gas entrepreneur. The investments of the company include Databricks, the AI Data Company; Dropbox, the company storage company; And Xiaomi, the Consumer Electronics Company.
In their 12 years of cooperation, Mr. Schiller said in a statement, he learned a lot from Mr Kramlich.
“There will be a lot of well -deserved recognition for Dick's legendary career,” he said. “But he was just as extraordinary as a person. He taught me about dreaming of great, loyalty, pride and coordination. '
