The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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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 …”
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.”
Sequoia imposed four-year vesting despite Cisco booking $250,000 a month
“Len and I walked into a four-year vesting plan after funding the company for three years, clearly a mezzanine investment. We're making, we're booking a quarter million dollars a month at that point.”
Cisco founders threatened PR disaster post-IPO to recover full unvested equity
“We ended up getting it back, but only because it would have looked very bad for the stock six months after when both of the founders walk out, and you can't tar and feather the other one with, girls don't know how to play on a team.”
Stanford refused to license federally funded router technology, Lerner says
“Stanford said, no, you cannot license this technology. They would not entertain any licensing. We had done our part, and we had taken the government's money. This is all public domain. We'd invented all of these wonderful things, but the Office of Technology L…”
Lerner: Co-founder Len Bosack resigned from Cisco in solidarity
“And so Len, I think you probably could have knocked over both Valentine and everybody else like little bowling pins when Len walked up there and walked out with me.”
Sequoia's Don Valentine invested $2.6M in Cisco, leaving founders with just 30%
“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.”
Cisco settled Stanford IP claims with royalties and network maintenance
“We ended up paying them, I think, a very fair royalty for the first, gosh, I want to say three million dollars a product or something. Very fair royalty. And we had to fix their network for three years.”
Lerner: Stanford refused to license early router technology
“But Stanford said, no, you cannot license this technology. They would not entertain any licensing. We had done our part, and we had taken the government's money. This is all public domain. We'd invented all of these wonderful things, but the Office of Technolo…”
Lerner: Cisco settled with Stanford via product royalties and 3-year network maintenance
“We ended up paying them, I think, a very fair royalty for the first Gosh, I want to say three million dollars a product or something. Very fair royalty. And we had to fix their network for three years.”