Robert Finkel - The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital

Management Lessons from the Pioneers of Private Investing

ROBERT A. FINKEL
with DAVID GREISING

Copyright 2010 by Robert Finkel and David Greising. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-162461-9
MHID: 0-07-162461-9

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For Matt and Allison, may you never stop learning.
R.A.F.

For Wes, Greta, and Claire, who make it all worth while.
D.G.

Robert A. Finkel
Prism Capital

Steven N. Kaplan
University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Joseph L. Rice III
Clayton, Dubilier & Rice

F. Warren Hellman
Hellman & Friedman LLC

Carl D. Thoma
Thoma Bravo, LLC and predecessor firms Golder
Thoma & Co.; Golder Thoma Cressey Rauner, LLC;
and Thoma Cressey Bravo, Inc.

Jeffrey Walker
JPMorgan Partners/Chase Capital Partners

John A. Canning, Jr.
Madison Dearborn Partners

Garth Saloner
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

William H. Draper III
Draper Richards L.P.

C. Richard Kramlich
New Enterprise Associates

Steven Lazarus
ARCH Venture Partners

Franklin Pitch Johnson, Jr.
Asset Management Company

Patricia M. Cloherty
Delta Private Equity Partners, LLC

I need to acknowledge a group of people who made it possible for me to put this project together:

First, thank you to the wonderful people whose life work is herein profiled; each interview was a master class for me. I wish to thank the Illinois Venture Capital Association for the opportunity to create mentoring panels that were the inspiration for the book. Also, my professional mentor, Art DelVesco, and the good partners at Wind Point Partners, for teaching me the ropes with a loose tie.

Joan Shapiro, a guiding hand in my very fortunate life, introduced me to David Greising. Leslie Pratch thoughtfully aided in our quest to reach the masters. Emily Thornton of BusinessWeek was kind enough to introduce me to McGraw-Hill. And to our editor at McGraw-Hill, Leah Spiro, thank you for your steadfast commitment to doing this right and on time. I am grateful to each of you.

To my loyal Partners at Prism, thank you for your patience as I traveled to conduct interviews. To my top-notch assistant, Lauren Belcher, for transcribing so long and so well and to the passionately focused Renata Johns, for your skillful research, well-crafted editing, and attention to detail, I thank you.

Through this process I have gained a friend in David Greising. Thank you, David, for being a terrific collaborator, writer, and interviewer. David artfully and faithfully incorporated the voice of the professional masters who very generously agreed to participate. When looking for a writer for the project, a friend of a friend, Terri Savage, advised me what I knew in my heart but was good to hear again: If you gave John Canning a referral for a plumber, you would make damn sure it was a good one, right? For me and this book, David Greising is the Harry Tuttle of writers (in the movie Brazil, Robert DeNiro plays the heroic and good-natured craftsman who always appears when you need him).

To my lovely and supportive wife Linda, for being my lifes partner, and to my parents, who taught me that persistence is everything, thank you.

Robert Finkel

It is one thing to come up with a good idea and quite another to exert the energy, resources, persistence, and creativity to bring the idea to life. I would like to thank Robert Finkel, first, for conceiving the notion that in these times of challenge and trial there ought to be a book about the core values of the private-equity and venture capital industries. The good humor, patience, and trust Robert embodied as we worked to bring his idea to fruition helped make this a mission, not just a piece of work.