Silicon Valley’s Typhoid Marys
from May/June 2003
Remember all the stories about the twenty- and thirtysomething M.B.A.’s piling out of investment banks, consulting firms, and Fortune 500 corporations to go to work for technology companies and Internet start-ups in Silicon Valley? They were certainly among the best and brightest of their generation, and today many of them are older, wiser—and underemployed. Might some of these tech wunderkinds be able to bring valuable skills to corporations as independent directors?
Corporate America thinks not. Says one senior headhunter: “There’s no interest in them. I think it’s that the whole dot-com thing came and went so fast, and everyone in Silicon Valley seemed to be saying, ‘We’re different; we don’t need to follow the rules.’ People in traditional companies don’t like that, especially today, when it’s so clear that you do need to follow rules.” Another recruiter notes that “there are no boards actively looking for 32-year-old directors.” Companies that feel they need tech expertise on their boards are looking elsewhere, headhunters say, mostly in the ranks of chief technology officers at big companies.
The aversion may be mutual. Even the tech whizzes who are working—and thus probably marginally more attractive as board members—have jobs at smaller, privately held outfits and are turned off by the image of old-line enterprises. “I don’t know anyone who’d do it,” says a partner at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, “and I would have a hard time understanding why people from our world would be interested.”
Sounds like the essence of a great deal. Everybody ends up happy.
