Michael Moritz: Steve Jobs, Sequoia, and the Weight of History

My guest today is Michael Moritz. He started as a journalist at Time Magazine, then spent 35 years at Sequoia Capital backing Google, Yahoo, PayPal, and YouTube. Before any of that, he wrote The Little Kingdom, the first inside account of Apple, written with unusual access to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and later relied on by Walter Isaacson for his own Jobs biography.

In this conversation, Moritz reflects on what made Jobs different before the world caught on (he calls him a bit of a mystic), what he learned from Sequoia founder Don Valentine about spotting talent, and how adversity shaped the best leaders he backed.

The conversation then turns personal: his new book Auslander tells his family's story as refugees from Nazi Germany, what he uncovered after his mother's death, and why, despite deep ties to San Francisco, he became a naturalized German citizen as an insurance policy. He also shares an update on Crankstart's $150M challenge to improve San Francisco.

The Puck: Venture Capital and Beyond, hosted by Jim Baer.