This story, however, begins with an article Leland read in the Wall Street Journal about a famous Bay Area venture capitalist who built a fortune buying companies and taking them public. A phone call led to several conversations which led to an offer to go to Puerto Rico to turn around this company. The opportunity suited Leland. He was chaffing at the large high tech company where he had been in a management rotation doing finance since leaving Anderson. In Silicon Valley, technology and marketing drive decisions.
Finance is a misnomer in Silicon Valley.
This is what I would tell people in school-whatever your skills and interests are, you need to make sure you go into a company where that function is a revenue generator so your boss will be the one who has the power. Changing jobs might have been considered by others too big a risk, but if Leland stayed at his large high tech firm, he felt that he would be falling further behind in his goals despite the fact that he was considered a high performer. He asked the investor to teach him how to make deals, but the investor had other plans and instead sent Leland to Puerto Rico to see what he could accomplish there. I think he gave this to me as a test case-the last outpost in the Roman Empire. I stepped into a losing situation.