Welcome to Driving Alpha, a podcast hosted by Alpha Partners, where we speak to investors about how they drive alpha in their portfolio companies and to LPs and the greater venture ecosystem. Today I'm proud to have David Hornick, my friend, a founding partner at Lobby Capital and also previously a GP at August Capital. He's been in venture for over 30 years. I've been in the startup ecosystem for maybe that long, but I've been in venture for a good long time. I also want to mention some of his notable investments include Splunk, Bill.com, GitLab, and MaintainX. He earned the title of a member of Forbes Midas List in 2012. Prior to venture, it makes you wonder like what have I been doing since then? Holy, 13 years. We're gonna get into that as well. So what's gonna get him on the Midas List 2026? I also want to mention that prior to being a venture, he was an attorney. He's a graduate of Stanford undergrad and Harvard Law. I want to understand more about his background in law, and he's a lecturer at Stanford and Harvard Law School. So David, welcome to the pod.
I thought going to law school that I was going to be a public defender. That was why I went to law school. And then I did it for a bit while in law school and said, 'Huh, I don't think I'm cut out for this.' That landed me in New York City, where I was clerking for a judge on the Second Circuit. And then I ended up working in a big litigation shop firm called Kat. Kat's an amazing firm, and I got to work with really smart, interesting people. But one day I came home from work and I was having a conversation with my wife, and she said, 'You know what, you fight for a living, but don't bring it home.' I thought, 'Okay, that's interesting.' And eventually we had a conversation where she said, 'You know what, this may not be the thing that is really gonna make you happy, gonna make us happy. What is that thing?' And after a bunch of conversations with her friends, I ended up moving back to California. I'd been an undergrad at Stanford. I had enjoyed the Palo Alto area, and a bunch of my friends in that class of 1990 had started a number of interesting companies, in particular Yahoo, where Jerry Yang, who had been in my freshman dorm and a friend of mine, had started this incredible company. It was growing like crazy. The internet was emerging. And my buddy from Stanford, who had been my roommate in law school, said, 'Well, why don't you come represent startups out here?' And I said, 'That sounds great. What does that mean?' I didn't know anything about business. I didn't know anything about startups. I had been a litigator. I had been a computer musician. None of that was really on the plan. But when I got back to Silicon Valley and started representing startups, then I realized, 'Oh my God, this is amazing.' What is it? It turns out it's just a bunch of really smart people who see a problem and they say, 'I think we could solve this problem with technology, and here's how we're going to do it. And if you give me some money, I'll be able to hire some people to go build the technology, and then I'll go sell it. And if that works, I'll either raise some more money or I'll make enough money that I don't have to raise money ever again. And if all of that goes really well, then I can sell the company or I can take it public, and that'll be amazing.' I was like, 'Wow, I can't believe that works.' And it totally did. It was amazing. And the people I was working with, I loved. I was working with all these early founders who are still friends of mine. I was trading emails today with a guy named James Wen, and James is one of the founding partners of Obvious Ventures with Ev Williams, founder of Twitter. And James was my first client when he was, I think, in his 20s. I helped form his company, I helped work with him to raise money, I helped him sell the company. Then he started a new company, then I became the lawyer to that company, and I got to go to the meetings for that company. I mean, it was just an amazing time. But what happened was, it was such a busy time that law firms had to send idiots like me to the board meetings because they didn't have enough people. So I was sent to these board meetings, and the job of the lawyer at the board meeting is like, just take notes. Take notes, you put out the minutes. If someone's doing something you think is super illegal, you might tell them later, but like, don't be disruptive. Just what? And so I got to these board meetings, and it struck me that they were just a bunch of smart people sitting around a table. They had opinions about a business that they were trying to make successful, and they were in a conversation. I was like, 'Well, I have opinions. I have thoughts. Why would I sit silently just because I'm the lawyer?' Well, that's the reason, because you're the lawyer. It's not your job to have opinions about the business or whatever. But I was undaunted by that. And so I was going to all these board meetings and talking with people about what I thought they should do in their business. And it wasn't because I had a business school degree or anything else. It just struck me as logical. 'Oh, why don't you think about this?' or 'Why would this do this?' And so I got to know a bunch of really great entrepreneurs in that process. In one instance, I got fired because I contradicted a VC in the room, and he didn't like it, and he had me fired. But in one case, in the case of Evite, a really innovative, smart, interesting company, the investors in that company thought I was saying smart things, and they said, 'Hey, have you ever thought about the venture business?' And at that point, of course I had thought about the venture business. Like, 'Oh my God, venture business is amazing.' So I spent four months interviewing with them, going to lunches and dinners, sitting in on a partner meeting, and all these things. And at the end of it, they were like, 'We can't think of a reason not to hire you. Lawyers aren't great at this job. Lawyers are agents. They do the bidding of others. And VCs are principals. We make these important decisions. And so I'm not sure you're going to be good at this, but we kind of like you. And so if you want to join us, then great.' And that was what happened in June of 2000. I withdrew from the DC bar. I withdrew from the New York Bar. I became an inactive member of the California Bar, which I have been now for 25 years. And said, 'Great, I guess I'm a VC now, 'cause I can't do the law.' And as I said, it's 25 years ago, and so far it's gone pretty well. So we'll see how the next 25 go.
I mean, step one is I just worked like a crazy person. And I know that's not like, 'Wait, can't you work smart or whatever?' Well, I was working smart too. But if you're working smart and you're working hard, then you get a lot more at bats. You get to see a lot more things. You get to meet a lot more people. And I was just going to all sorts of conferences. I was meeting all sorts of amazing people. I was talking to lots of people. I was the first VC blogger, along with some friends at August Capital. I was the first VC podcaster. I was just doing like everything. I started teaching here at Stanford Business School. I was just doing anything that I thought would allow me to meet amazing people. And then I say, 'Hey, by the way, I'm a VC. So if you're looking for money, you should talk to me.' And it turned out that was kind of the process. Just stay in front of a bunch of smart people, do a good job, work hard for people, so that when it comes time for them to say to themselves, 'Oh, I'm looking for money, I should talk to David Hornick,' or say to their advisers or their lawyers or their accountants or their friends or whatever, 'Hey, who should I raise money from?' 'Oh, you should talk to David Hornick.' Right, that's the win. I just need you to say, 'Oh, you should talk to David Hornick.' And so I've been doing that for 25 years of just like, 'Hey, how can I be helpful to you?' So that when that moment comes that you've got some interesting company, say, 'Oh, maybe I should talk to David Hornick.'
