Computer History Museum

Lamond, Pierre oral history

This oral history track’s Pierre Lamond’s life and career from Paris in 1930, where he was born, through multiple companies and venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. He developed an early interest in electronics listening to “Radio France Libre” broadcast from London during WWII. He served in the French Army for a period in the 1950’s. During the early 1950’s, he taught himself about solid state devices and eventually found a job at Transitron in Boston. He went to work there in October 1957 After several years, he became disenchanted with Transitron, and moved on to Fairchild Semiconductor in 1961, where he spent much of his time working in R&D under Gordon Moore. In 1967, he joined with Charlie Sporck to move over to National Semiconductor. He took a detour to become CEO of Coherent Radiation in 1976 and then to Advent in Boston, but he eventually returned to National in 1978. The next major career step was to move into venture capital in 1982, at which time he joined Don Valentine, an old Fairchild colleague, at Sequoia Capital. Since then, Lamond has remained active in venture investing with a variety of firms, including Khosla Ventures. As of 2017, he continues to be an active investor in several companies.

Item Details

Date
2017-06-30 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102738291
Organization
Computer History Museum (Publisher)
People
Pierre Lamond (Interviewee)
Marguerite Gong Hancock (Interviewer)
Douglas Fairbairn (Interviewer)
Category
Transcript
Format
PDF
Credit line
Computer History Museum
Extent
44 p.
Place of publication
USA/CA/Mountain View
Language
English
Acquisition number
X8254.2017
Subject
Transitron, Fairchild, Sequoia, National Semiconductor