Name Pierre Lamond Role Venture capitalist | ||
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Similar People Don Valentine, E Floyd Kvamme, Gil Amelio, Richard J Danzig | ||
Education Northwestern University Organizations founded National Semiconductor | ||
Oral History of Pierre Lamond
Pierre R Lamond (born 1930) is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, who has specialised in semiconductors, systems and cleantech. He was a partner at Sequoia Capital based in Menlo Park, California from 1981 until he left to join Vinod Khosla's Khosla Ventures as General Partner in March 2009. He left Khosla Ventures in 2013 and joined Eclipse Ventures as a Partner in 2014
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Career
Lamond was born in France and studied Electrical Engineering at Toulouse University as an undergraduate, where he also received a master's degree in Physics. He then gained another master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University.
His first job was an engineer with Transitron Electronics in 1957. In January 1962, he joined Gordon E. Moore's Fairchild Semiconductor, before he left in 1967 to run the company's spin-off, National Semiconductor, with Charles E. Sporck and Robert Widlar. At National Semiconductor they made the-then bold move of assembling all their semiconductor components outside the US, in Hong Kong and Singapore.
He has also been an executive at Coherent Radiation, where he was CEO until January 1976, and Advent Corp., a home-entertainment equipment company, where he was CEO from March 1976 until May 1977.
During his tenure at Sequoia Capital, Lamond was chairman at Cypress Semiconductor, Microchip Semiconductor, Vitesse Semiconductor, Redback Networks, Plumtree Software, Verisity and a Director of a number of other companies. While at Sequoia he acted as a mentor for the founders of YouTube. Despite being an early investor in several social network startups, he said in 2007 that "We're in Web 2.0 bubble in my opinion."
He is a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He had intended to retire in 2009, but instead joined Khosla, who specialise in energy-related companies, after being impressed with their focus on investing in research-based ventures. At Khosla Ventures, Lamond was on the Board of Seeo, Soladigm, Cogenra, Seamicro (sold to AMD), Point Source Power, Skybox. At Eclipse, Lamond is on the Boards of Light Lab, Kindred, Diassess, Cerebras, Flex Logix.
Personal life
Lamond is married. His son David is President of Lamond Capital Partners. Lamond has two other children Patricia and Philip.