A Bold Leap: Ever since the personal...
A Bold Leap: Ever since the personal computer was born, Stewart Alsop has been among the most popular and prescient pundits in high tech. As editor in chief of the influential computer industry trade weekly Infoworld, founder of the widely read PC Letter and emcee of the annual Agenda Conference--a kind of Bohemian Grove for geeks--the 44-year-old Alsop has had the power to make or break companies.
The son of the legendary political columnist of the same name, Alsop the younger humbled mighty Microsoft when Infoworld slammed a new version of MS-DOS on its front page, enraged now-departed Lotus Development Corp. chief Jim Manzi when he urged him to step down, and generally amused and informed with smoothly written and insightful commentaries.
But now Alsop is making the leap from observer to player: One week ago, he reported for work at New Enterprise Associates, a big venture capital firm. As part of NEA’s computer technology team, Alsop will help decide which entrepreneurs get funded.
“There were multiple motivations for my doing this,” Alsop says. “Obviously the money is a piece of it--you don’t get rich in journalism or publishing. But that was really a small piece. I really like the idea of being an insider, of helping an entrepreneur to build something.”
