Cisco co-founder Sandy Lerner recounts the investment terms imposed by Sequoia Capital after founders self-funded the startup for three years.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Incoming Cisco CEO John Morgridge told Lerner she was 'everything wrong'
“Yeah, and he denies it, but I will swear on the lives of my cats, the first thing he said to me was, I hear you're everything that's wrong with Cisco.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Incoming CEO Morgridge told Lerner she was everything wrong with Cisco
“Yeah, and he denies it, but I will swear on the lives of my cats, the first thing he said to me was, I hear you're everything that's wrong with Cisco.”
Assertion Supported
Cisco CEO John Morgridge abruptly fired co-founder Sandy Lerner six months post-IPO
“I was sitting in my little office in the corner, as I did every day, and he came in, and he sat down in the chair without making an appointment, and he said, ah, you know, I think it's time you retire. He says, you've got all this money now, you just, time to …”
Disclosure
Founders sold all Cisco stock due to zero respect for management
“Len and I agreed to sell our stock on a very joint basis, and we did it because we fundamentally had no respect for people running the company. And it wasn't really that we didn't believe in the company. I mean, I was the one who said that Cisco would be a bil…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stanford excluded Lerner from curriculum meetings held at a men-only venue
“When the faculty would meet at the beginning of the year to plan the curriculum, even though I was the head of all of the computing facilities, Both administrative and the curriculum computing I went and had lunch with the faculty wives because where they had …”
Assertion Supported
Don Valentine invested $2.6 million for massive Cisco equity and control
“He gave us 2.6 million dollars, and Len and I got about 30%, but remember, he was the chairman of the board of the company, and he got stock from that, and all of his friends got stock.”