Silicon Valleys Youth Problem

Silicon Valleys Youth Problem

Despite all the differences in culture, cool and hard-core coding prowess, there are signs that, in some areas at least, the old guard and the new guard might be inching closer together. I spoke last year with Doug Leone, a venture capitalist at Sequoia, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most prestigious investment firms. Sequoia funded both Stripe and Meraki, and also, almost 30 years ago, Cisco. “I see the old guard and the new guard coming together again,” Leone said. “People want the enterprise tools they use at work to look and feel like the web apps they use at home.” As an investor, Leone is especially interested in software-as-service companies that host their products on the cloud and address business applications — in other words, companies like Meraki that combine the best of both old and new. It’s a heartening prospect.