1. I often thought the term 'vulture capitalist' was just a simile of 'venture capitalist' and coined the bad behaviour of some VC firms esp in the dawn of the dot com era. But there is a story behind it......

2)Jim Clark is one of the very few people to have started 3 $bn companies. The first was Silicon Graphics. Glenn Mueller, a VC from Mayfield Fund paid $800k for a 40% stake(!) in SG. This was followed a year later by a $17m investment by Mueller.

3)Mueller however engineered something akin to an equity kicker, for every round of financing Jim had to give some of his equity to Mueller….

4) When SG IPO’d Jim Clark only had c.2% of the company. This infuriated Clark and he coined the term ‘vulture capital’ and made sure everyone in Silicon Valley knew what had happened.

5) Mueller’s deal flow dried up. He was no longer invited to social events, he was ostracised.

6) Jim Clark went on to start Netscape. The Mayfield Fund suggested Mueller contact Jim to try and invest. Jim refused. Instead, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins did the deal.

7) Mueller suffered from paranoid delusions that everyone in Silicon Valley was out for him. Mueller committed suicide, shot himself in the head.