C. Richard Kramlich, a first investor in the Silicon Valley who co-founded the Giant of Investments new Enterprise members, helping to feed the highly expanding technological industry, died on Saturday in his home in San Francisco. He was 89 years old.
His death was announced by New Enterprise Associates.
Kramlich (pronounced Cram-Click), whose career has crossed more than five decades, was among the first supporters of the Apple computer; Silicon Graphics and Macromedia software companies; And the Computer Networking Computer companies and 3com, whose founders invented Ethernet.
He co-founded his company, New Enterprise Associates, or Nea, building it from an initial fund from $ 16 million in the 70s to one who now supervises investments of almost $ 26 billion.
But he distinguished himself among the financiers of the Silicon Valley sea because of his grace and kindness, said Scott Sandell, Chief Investment Officer and executive president of the Nea. “He believed that the risk activity was a deal of people and 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 that Koger purchased in 1955; Her mother, Dorothy (Earl) Kramlich, was an aeronautical engineer who later supervised the family.
When he was 13, Dick followed the entrepreneurial footsteps of his father, starting his “small bulb company”, he said in a 2015 interview with the computer’s history museum. “My father encouraged me to do it if I had used my money, and so I bought a cars from a train of Sylvania Corporation bulbs” and he saw them again from his bedroom.
He added: “I have come for three generations of entrepreneurs and once you got it in your DNA, everything else is boring”.
He attended Northwestern University, graduating with a degree in Russian history in 1957, and continued to serve in the strategic division of Air Force air commands. After obtaining a master’s degree at the Harvard Business School, he went to work for Koger and then learned the ropes of investments while working for a company in Boston.
In 1969, he obtained an area with Arthur Rock & Co., one of the first investment companies to make high-risk bets on un ships on technological start-ups. He beat more than a thousand nominations, he said in the 2015 interview, sending a handwritten letter to Mr. Rock who expresses his desire to find “a bigger life out there”.
In 1977, he started the Nea with Chuck Newhall and Frank Bonsal, two investors he had met in Boston. Persuading others to support their new fund took more than a year, and during that period Mr. Kramlich met a couple of entrepreneurs who were both appointed Steve (Jobs and Wozniak).
Their company, Apple Computer, was not as good as two other personal computer companies on the market, said Kramlich in 2015. But their sense of design and entrepreneurial spark were impressive. “They had the Pizazz,” he said, “where the other two companies were more oriented to engineering”.
He felt compelled to invest and use their money to do it. Payoff arrived three years later, in 1980, when Apple became public. This investment allowed Kramlich to buy a 1927 Tudor house in the Heights garrison neighborhood of San Francisco; He had bronze apples modeled as doors of doors of the front gate to remind him of the godsend. (Last year, he listed the house for sale for $ 19.5 million.)
Not long after, he met Pamela Kay Palmer through a common friend; They got married in 1981.
Venture Capital Investing is designed to absorb many losses in the pursuit of an agreement managed at home, leaving a start-up cemetery failed along the road. But Mr. Kramlich was known to be attested to investments in difficulty for a long time after others had abandoned them.
“He said,” never say to die, “said Sandell.
In the early 1980s, the pension, the start-up behind the PowerPoint software, was about to run out and the Nea’s partners and they refused to do more. So Mr. Kramlich convinced his wife who would have to pause the work on the house they were building on Stinson beach and use the money to keep the company alive. The Gamble repaid: in 1987, Microsoft purchased the pension for $ 14 million and PowerPoint became one of the best known software programs in the world.
Financial Engines, a consultancy start-up on investments supported by the Nea, employed 18 years to be public and “crossed five different business models,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of the company. Nea, he added, patiently held his actions throughout the time.
Thanks to that patience, and the kindness of Mr. Kramlich, the managers who had shot or threatened to shoot never stopped wanting to work with him.
“People do not leave a relationship with Dick with any anger,” said James Clark, founder of the Silicon Graphics software and hardware company, whose Board of Directors of Kramlich has served. “He is just a basicly good man.”
In 2002, Mr. Kramlich told Mr. Maggioncalda that he would be expelled by the end of the year if things were not shot. But the delivery of Mr. Kramlich inspired the trust rather than fear, Mr. Maggioncalda recalled: “He said it calmly and support”. The company recovered and Mr. Maggioncalda conducted it through an initial public offer in 2010.
After Mr. Kramlich retired from Nea in 2012, she continued to pursue a passion for art collection. He and Mrs. Kramlich were among the first private collectors to focus on new media while it emerged as an art form in the late 1980s and accumulated a vast collection that emphasized audio and computer art, Videos, films and photographic slides. Their collection of videos and installations has grown up to over 300 pieces, so large as to build a three -level house in Napa Valley to show it.
In addition to Mrs. Kramlich, she survived 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, with Deborah (Durbrow) Kramlich, who divorced in 1966, and Lynne (Shamburger) Kramlich, who died in 1981.
Retired, Kramlich continued to guide the founders and investors. A new company also started, Green Bay Ventures, with Anthony Schiller, a liquefied natural gas entrepreneur. The company’s investments include Databrks, the AI data company; Dropbox, the file storage company; and Xiaomi, the consumer electronics company.
In their 12 years of work together, Mr. Schiller said in a declaration, he learned a lot from Mr. Kramlich.
“There will be a lot of well -deserved recognition for Dick’s legendary career,” he said. “But it was extraordinary as a person. He taught me to dream great, loyalty, pride and alignment. “