With 15 years experience in tech, he was most recently a General Partner with Rustic Canyon Partners (RCP), an early-stage-focused investment fund with $500 million under management.
"Equinix is already doing what Exodus Communicationss) and others are trying to do," says Neal Dempsey, general partner with the venture firm Bay Partners, which has no investment in Equinix.
According to Grabit board member Jim Kim, a founder of Formation 8 and general partner with Builders, the industrial robotics startup is now generating meaningful revenue and recently locked in two new customers, one in apparel and the other in logistics.
As Tom Rosch, a general partner with Interwest Partners, a venture capital firm, noted, "There just aren't a whole lot of Google analogies".
Joe Montana, the four-time Super Bowl champion known as The Comeback Kid, is a general partner with Liquid 2 Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund.
Paul White, a general partner with Fremont Ventures, a San Francisco venture capital firm, said the industry in general was "cleaning house".
Mr. Schell, until recently a general partner with Apax Partners, a private equity firm, now has two different business cards, one with his e-mail address and one without.
Technical expertise is only part of the challenge for venture capitalists making the transition to energy, said Charles J. McDermott, a general partner with RockPort Capital Partners in Boston.
He subsequently became vice president of The Weiss and Klau Co. Thereafter he was a General Partner with the investment firm if Wertheim & Co, and concluded his career at Smith Barney.
"In paid [Internet] search, he was ahead of the pack by years, not months," said Erik Straser, general partner with Mohr Davidow, one of the venture capital firms that have lined up to invest in Idealab of late.
Stephen Murray, a general partner with J. P. Morgan Partners, said Thomas H. Lee, based in Boston, and J. P. Morgan, which originally made separate bids for the unit, planned to pay about $210 million in equity and borrow the remainder from banks.
