Dyslexic Advantage - Venture Capitalist Scott Sandell at the Conference on Dyslexia and Innovation

[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]