Page 23 - Priorities #55 2013-March/April

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FUTUREby Karen Macklin RayROThROCkis a highly successful venture successful run at Sun Microsystems as a leader in sales, marketing,
capitalist who has created and guided more than 50 innovative startup companies over the past two decades. He’s chair of the National Venture Capital Association, and was ranked #49 on the 2012 Forbes’ Midas List of Tech’s Top Investors. But like the wisest investors, Rothrock doesn’t only invest in businesses—he invests in the future. That means he’s a strong philanthropic supporter of the things that matter most to him. “When you create wealth,” he says, “you can do something with it.”
A Woodside Priory alumni parent
who is also a longtime member on the
Board of Trustees, Rothrock was chairman
of the campaign for the new Performing
Arts Center. He not only invested (along
with his wife, Meredith) a significant
amount in the project, but he became a
chief organizer for the initiative, helping to
obtain the necessary permits and rallying
other parents and alumni to contribute
to the cause. He even spoke at town hall
meetings to help persuade those who
live in the area that the expansion of the
performing arts program—and the school, itself—would add value to Portola Valley. The result, of course, was a beautiful new multi- million dollar performing arts facility with a state of the art 400-seat proscenium theater aptly named Rothrock Performance Hall.
Rothrock has always loved piloting new projects. After a short career as a nuclear engineer, a field he found to be lacking in creativity, Rothrock came to Silicon Valley to take part of the technological revolution in the early ‘80s. He began as a software programmer, but quickly realized his talent for recognizing an innovative product and convincing others to get behind it. After a
and promotion, Rothrock’s mentors urged him to go to business school. He graduated with top honors from Harvard Business School and landed a job as a venture capitalist with the Rockefeller family in New York City at a Rockefeller partnership called Venrock. Twenty- five years later, he’s still with Venrock—though now he works out of the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters.
“I was really taken by this whole venture capital thing,” he says. “I like to work with young people with fresh ideas. I can take a germ of an idea and form it into a product that people like. I’m good at talking to customers and raising money ... and, as my wife says, I have a cool job because I
get to see the future.”
Rothrock has been strongly influenced
by his time spent with the Rockefellers, who are known for their generous philanthropic gestures over the last century. “The idea was always to create wealth that they could give away as a family,” says Rothrock, who had a front seat at many meetings where the Rockefeller family members decided
what to fund and by how much. The generosity of the Rockefellers inspired Rothrock to start giving substantial contributions early on in life to the causes he most cares about, like education and the arts.
Rothrock, himself, is a lifelong musician who has played multiple instruments, including clarinet, piano, sax, oboe, and bass guitar. He had a modest, middle-class upbringing in Fort Worth, Texas, but is grateful for having had the means necessary to pursue his artistic interests. (His parents, he recalls, once sold a horse to buy him a piano when he was a kid.) These days, he recognizes that not all young artists have the resources they need to develop their abilities,
“
I have a cool job because I get to see the future.
”