[Dr. Brock Eide] I want to introduce our
first invited speaker of the night, Scott
Sandell. Scott is a general partner of
NEA, a venture capital firm, the largest
venture capital firm in Silicon Valley I
believe. Scott is going to come and share
some of his thoughts on being a Dyslexic
adult.
[Scott Sandell] The reason that I came is
that I feel like my journey is one of very
small odds. I am going to tell you a little
bit about a different journey, which is
that of my daughter Anna who is sitting
over here, who I think faces very different
odds, because when she was in second
grade, after a lot of work from her
incredible mother...which, maybe, two and
one half years it took to diagnose she was
Dyslexic. But in the moment in which that
happened, which took place about 6 weeks
into the second grade, we were sitting with
her teacher, Annie Woodbridge...and I asked
Annie a really simple question. I said,
Annie, what are the chances that you are
going to recommend that Anna go on to
third grade in this school? And she
answered me instantly, "I'm not going to
do that. Anna would not make it in 3rd
grade in this school." In that instant,
it became clear to me. Well, I asked her
why, and she said, "Because she is not
learning how to read. In second grade you
have to learn how to read because in 3rd
grade, you have to know how to read in
order to learn. " When she said that, in
an instant I realized what had happened
to me. I mean, we had started to suspect
that Anna was Dyslexic, but we really
didn't know. I certainly didn't know that
I was Dyslexic. But I remembered one really
profound experience which happened when I
was 26. When I was 26 my parents were
moving out of their house, the house I'd
grown up in, and I went home for the
weekend to collect some things, the last
little remnants of childhood, and one of
those was a box. My mother sat me down
at the box. She said, "I want to go through
the box with you." And I said, mom, I'm in
a hurry...okay, I'll just take the box with
me. I'll go through the box later. She
said, "No, no, no, no...I have to sit with
you when you go through this box." I said,
okay mom. So we started going through the
box, and the box is a collection of report
cards and little odds and ends that my
mother had collected along the way. Maybe
your mothers had a similar box. And I
remembered creative play school, which
was preschool. It was a wonderful place.
I remembered Mrs. Eggler, I remembered
where we went to school. One of the
favorite years of my life. And then we got
into the public school system, and I
remembered more difficult years, but I
remembered Kindergarten. I remembered
first grade. I remembered second grade.
I remembered all the teachers, and when I
read the report card and the things they
had to say, it all came back to me. And
then we got to the report card for third
grade. And I looked at it, and the first
thing I realized was I didn't remember
the teachers name. My mother was sort of
holding my knee at this point, and she
said, "This was a difficult year for you."
And I started reading the report card.
And it basically read like blasphemy. The
comments were so terrible, and I read
through them a couple of times. I couldn't
actually believe that anyone would ever
say anything like this about me. And I
realized I not only had no recollection of
this teacher, or her comments. I had no
recollection of third grade. The entire
year. Nothing about it, to this day, I
cannot remember anything about 3rd grade.
It's just gone. And at the end of that, my
mother said, "You know, your father and I
didn't think that teacher liked you very
much." [laughter]"But, we thought you
were a smart kid, and you were working
hard, and so we went to the principal and
we told the principal that we thought..."
She, of course, failed me, by the way...I
failed spectacularly. My parents
recommended I go on to 4th grade, be
given a chance, just to see if it would
work because their theory was, this was a
bad teacher. So, in fourth grade--I didn't
fail fourth grade, and I remember 4th
grade. I remember a lot of things about
4th grade, and 5th grade, and all the other
grades since then. Slowly, but surely I
crawled out of the special education class
that I was already in, in second grade.
And in 6th grade, I had a really
inspirational teacher, Mr. Littlefield,
that I remember well. He inspired me to
do really well in Social Studies, I think
it was called. Then, in 7th grade I had a
math teacher who got me interested in Math.
Eighth grade, I had my most proud
accomplishment. It's sort of ironic, I now
realize because I didn't know I was
Dyslexic, then. But, I took a mandatory
class called 'Reading'. Now, you would
think that is not exactly suited to
Dyslexics, and it wasn't well suited to me.
But I worked really, really hard at it.
And I got the highest grade ever achieved
by anyone in the class. [applause from
audience] So...that's my proudest moment
in academia. A lot of other things
fortunately came easier to me. What I
noticed was that, as school became more
complicated, or the things that we studied
became more complicated, I started to be
able to understand them first, sort of at
pace with other students, and then, faster
than other students. So, I started to
excel. I demanded of my mother... we had
been placed in a tiering system in the
school, and so I was placed on a low rung.
But I didn't like that very much, and I
insisted that my mother
take me to the principal every year and
I advocated to get moved up, and eventually
I moved up to all the Honors Classes in
high school. That allowed me to go to
Dartmouth College, and, ultimately to
Stanford Business School. So, I sort of
overcame that from an academic
perspective, but of course,
I'm still a terribly slow reader. I can't
spell to save my life. I tried to prepare
some slides for you tonight, I can't tell
you how many spelling mistakes there were.
I still can't spell Dyslexia, for example.
[Laughter from audience] Ought to get that
one right....thank you... The thing that
is so clear to me now I have my 50th
birthday coming up in September, is, what
an unlikely set of odds it was, to get to
where I am today. You know, it's an awful
lot of luck. That's a really unfortunate
thing when you consider the people who
don't have that good fortune, who didn't
maybe have a mother and father who said in
3rd grade, you know, give him another
chance. And they advocated for me in lots
of ways beyond that, of course, who were
incredibly understanding and never thought
I was stupid even though the teacher said
I was stupid. I'm quite sure I would have
not made it without them. But I've had all
kinds of other things that went my way,
and I just think that there are lots of
kids that don't get that chance. The
problem with that is not just the
unfortunate human stories that those
people lead, but it's that our society
needs what they have. And I know that,
because I am a venture capitalist. I invest
in entrepreneurs for a living. What a lot
of you know in this room is that there is
a huge over-representation of Dyslexics in
the entrepreneurial community. I've seen
studies that say as much as 40%, and that
doesn't surprise me at all. We are going
to hear from one, not too long from now.
But we see this everyday. It's not just
Dyslexics, it's all forms of
Neurodiversity. They are incredibly
prevalent in Silicon Valley, and I think
they are actually prevalent in the venture
capital business itself. The thing that
was really lucky for me--I did a bunch of
different jobs before I had a chance to
try my hand at venture capitalists
starting in 1996 at NEA-- is that I got
this chance to do something that I'm
actually good at. That's the thing that
most people don't get to do. What I've
come to realize, since I joined in 1996,
NEA has gotten to be a better and better
firm, and we've been in a position to hire
really smart people. So I kind of skated
in when it was still easy, you know?
[laughter] Well, nowadays if you want to
get a job at NEA, I mean...the resume you
have to have is just ridiculous. And I
really question whether we are looking
for the right resumes. [Applause]
Fortunately, I think, people enter at
different stages, at different levels,
and this is probably the most prevalent
at the entry level positions, where these
kids have just stunning...I mean, if they
didn't go to Stanford or Princeton, and
they didn't graduate with a 3.9 average in
Electrical Engineering and do 6 other
remarkable things on the side, and then
go to Goldman Sachs and be the top analyst
out of 20 in the United States, you know,
after 2 years, well...they probably don't
get an interview. But what is more
interesting and the reason I bring it up,
that, if you looked at the biographies of
all the people sitting around the table at
our partners meetings every week. you'd
realize it's academically and incredible
group of people. What I have found, what
really surprises me is a thing I thought
might be most interesting for you guys,
tonight, to consider, is how, as a
Dyslexic, I see things they don't see.
And I see them a lot faster than they
see them. Now, I know a lot of people
can do a lot of things I can't do. And
they certainly did a lot better at school.
But, my biggest frustration now after 18
years, is trying to coax my partners
along to see something that I see. To me,
it is just as clear as day, you know? " Of
course we've got all these problems, but
here is what is going to happen...This is
where it is going to go." And I've been
right enough times to keep my job, and
I've of course been wrong a lot of times,
that's sort of the nature of the business.
But that's thing that I think is a little
hard to understand from the outside.
Because, the venture capital business is
not very well understood by people who
haven't been in it. Just to give you some
statistics to give you a sense of what I
am talking about, there are about 6,000
people in the United States who call
themselves venture capitalists,
individuals, about 6,000. A lot of them
are here, not all. Those 6,000 people
take in about 20 billion dollars a year in
new capital commitments. They invest that
money, on average, in about 1200 new
companies per year. Twelve hundred
companies, and about 50 to 60 of those go
public in a given year, obviously many
years later. But those are the averages
over a fairly long period of time. And
there is probably another 50 companies
which are acquired in a way that makes
for a very attractive return. So, what does
that tell you? That tells you that
~maybe~ 10% of them are attractive
`investments at the end of the day. And
there are 6,000 people going after them.
So that sounds interesting to you, but if
I then peel back the data a little bit
more, you'd realize that a huge percentage
of the returns are not made by the 55,
they are made by the 10. Ten companies a
year. And if you can't figure out which
those companies are, remember there are
6,000 people trying to predict which
companies are going to be those 10
companies every year...I can tell you, if
you don't get there first, you don't have
a chance. You know, if the entrepreneur
thinks you don't understand their business
in 5, 10, 15 minutes; they go on to the
next meeting to somebody who does. That's
the thing people don't understand about
the venture business. You think of these
guys sitting there with their checkbooks
just writing a check
to whoever they feel like, and assumming
that's the nature of the job couldn't be
farther from the truth. There are probably
100 to 200 people in the industry of the
6,000 who are really making great returns
for their limited partners. It's a story
for another day why the other guys get to
keep their job [laughter], but that's
probably the real data, is 100 to 200 of
them, because there's only 10 to 15
companies a year that are worth investing
in at the end of the day. It also means, of
course, there's a high failure rate. All
of us make lots of mistakes or invest in
things that don't turn into one of those,
some of which are really wonderful
companies, by the way. They don't all have
to be financial home runs to change the
world.
So, that's the story of what somebody
with incredibly improbable odds has
gotten to see here in this heartland of
innovation. What I'm most excited about
is that my daughter doesn't face those
odds because in second grade we started
investigating a way for her to have a
different path. And that led her to Charles
Armstrong School, there's a few people
in the room who know what that is. [applause]
I think we have a significant percentage of
the board members here today. [laughter]
We have Claudia, who is on the board of
Dyslexic Advantage is the head of the
school, and helped to change my daughter's
life. [applause] David Obershaw is
President of the board. Our daughters
were in class together. He went on to
really put his time behind this incredible
organization. I'm happy to say that Anna
went back to her regular school system, so
to speak, in fourth grade...fifth grade?
Fifth grade, and is doing wonderfully
well, so she faces very different odds
than I faced, and I'm really excited about
that [applause] So, I think as you...as you
think about where we are this weekend, and
you think about the fact that 40% of the
entrepreneurs are Dyslexic, also remember,
that since 1980, all net new job creation
in the United States has happened in small
or start-up companies. So, 40% of those
are started by Dyslexic people. What does
this country need so badly? We need to
invent a new economy that creates new jobs
and employs the 12 million or whatever
unemployed people that we have today.
So I think what Brock and Fernette have
done, in starting to examine with
scientific rigor, the basis of advantage
that Dyslexic people bring to our society,
is incredibly important, and I'm happy to
be here, and I hope we'll all help to
advance that cause this weekend.
Thank you. [applause]