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Roger McNamee

McNamee, playing at a 2008 New Year's Eve show
Born May 2, 1956 (1956-05-02) (age 53)
Albany, New York[1]
Nationality  United States
Alma mater Yale University (B.A. 1980)[2],
Tuck School of Business (M.B.A. 1982)[3]
Occupation Venture capitalist, musician

Roger McNamee (born May 2, 1956) is a founding partner of the venture capital firm Elevation Partners. Prior to co-founding the firm McNamee co-founded private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and headed the T. Rowe Price Science and Technology Fund.

McNamee is also a touring musician, first as a founding member of the Flying Other Brothers, and more recently in that group's follow-on band, Moonalice. Between the two groups, McNamee estimated in April 2009 that he has played 800 shows.[4]

Contents

Career at T. Rowe Price

McNamee joined T. Rowe Price as an analyst in 1982, after receiving his M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business.[3]

By 1989 he was leading the firm's Science & Technology Fund, a period when the fund returned about 17% annually to investors[5] and, in a move atypical for mutual funds, he made venture capital investments in Electronic Arts (which went public in 1989) and Sybase (which had its IPO in 1991).[6]

Music career

McNamee is also a musician. He played in the band Flying Other Brothers from 1997 to 2006[7] and now plays with the band Moonalice, using the stage personae of "Chubby Wombat Moonalice"[5].

Relationship with Wikipedia

According to the New York Times, McNamee has been instrumental in arranging at least two $500,000 donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.[8][9] Roger McNamee is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's advisory board, and acts "as a special advisor to the Executive Director on business and strategy issues."[10]

Influence

Bill Gates wrote in his book The Road Ahead :"Roger was a great sounding board for many of the ideas I wrote about".[5] Mark Zuckerberg (who met McNamee in summer 2006 at a time when Facebook reportedly had buyout offers of around $750 million) said McNamee was "emphatic" that Facebook not be sold; Zuckerberg stated he "clearly cared about building something long-term and about the impact of the things we build as opposed to just making money in the short term", advice that Portfolio.com called "prescient": in October 2007, Facebook sold just 1.6 percent of the company to Microsoft for $240 million.[5]

References

  1. ^ "Techie guy by day, rocker guy by night", a January 28, 2005 article from USA Today
  2. ^ President's Advisory Committee on Digital Yale, from the Yale University website
  3. ^ a b Tuck Investiture from a Dartmouth College website
  4. ^ "Investment pays off for late-blooming rocker", an April 13, 2009 article from the San Francisco Chronicle
  5. ^ a b c d "Rock Stars of Tech". Portfolio.com. December 16, 2007. http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2007/12/16/Roger-McNamee-Profile. Retrieved 2009-09-25. 
  6. ^ "Twitter Lures In An Unusual Backer". The Wall Street Journal. September 25, 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090925-713162.html. Retrieved 2009-09-25. 
  7. ^ Flying Other Brothers website
  8. ^ "Open-Source Trouble in Wiki World", New York Times, March 17, 2008
  9. ^ "Why would someone toss $1.35m at Wikipedia?", The Register, March 18, 2008
  10. ^ Roger McNamee to Become Wikimedia Advisor January 2009







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