Writing family history taught Moritz: you can never have too many passports
He didn't apply for German citizenship because he feared being expelled from America — he learned from writing his parents' story of escape that the history of the 1930s was only truly burned into a nation's memory in Germany, and a passport is the only insurance you can carry with you.
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Only ugly paintings are worth hanging on the wall
Moritz and his wife collect "ugly paintings" — Otto Dix, Frank Auerbach and the like. His reasoning: a decorative painting is exhausted at a glance, whereas a difficult painting has many layers you can keep exploring as you age; it carries history and tells stories. He traces this habit of "looking carefully" back to his reporting career — looking at landscapes, buildings, people, all the same thing. But he explicitly denies that this directly improves his investing; he only says the three are connected when he sizes up a person and considers building a business relationship.
— Michael MoritzChildren don't ask because they don't think their parents have stories
Asked why children don't ask their parents more about family history while they're alive, Moritz is blunt: they're too self-centred, not curious, they don't understand that everyone has a story and that the deeper you dig the more interesting it gets; they don't know how to ask questions, and they don't know how to listen. He says if he could question his parents now, it wouldn't be one question but hundreds — because one answer leads to the next. But he adds a layer: these were people who lived through extreme trauma, memory gets suppressed, and even with the will, it's hard to dig the answers out.
— Michael MoritzHe starts his questions at his grandparents' age ten
Moritz says he would start with what his grandparents' lives were like around age ten, because he believes the first ten to fifteen years of a life are shaped profoundly, and everything afterwards echoes off that base. The concrete picture he gives: imagine a ten-year-old boy in 1890 or 1891, living in a small village by a river in central Germany — who woke you up in the morning? Did anyone share your room, your bed? Do you remember what you ate for breakfast? What clothes did you wear to school? His grandfather Max fought in World War I and survived Verdun, and that stretch alone could yield countless questions.
— Michael MoritzHe got into Sequoia by writing a letter; four firms turned him down
Moritz says his move from journalism to venture capital was entirely unplanned, pure luck. When he was in San Francisco in 1981 and 1982 he knew nothing about Silicon Valley; there were almost no tech companies in San Francisco then, unless you counted Charles Schwab. It was covering Apple, Atari, Microsoft and Oracle that made him realise for the first time that people started companies, and that founders could be just 18 or 20. He couldn't start one himself, so he joined a small publishing company. Later he wrote letters to the heads of five venture firms — in that era you could only write letters, not send email — four rejected him, and Don Valentine brought him into Sequoia. He says Valentine's peers thought he was insane for hiring someone with a history degree, a reporting career and no technical background at all.
— Michael MoritzYou can never have too many passports
Moritz has obtained German citizenship. He rules out several guesses himself: he isn't afraid of being expelled from the United States, he already has British citizenship; he doesn't think he'd be threatened or intimidated in San Francisco; and he doesn't plan to move to Munich. The real reason he applied came from an observation while writing the book — whether in Western Europe or the United States, the only country that truly drummed the history of the 20s, the 30s and the Holocaust into its entire population was Germany; not France, not England and Wales, not the United States. He sums it up in one line: you can never have enough passports.
— Michael MoritzBritain's problem is imperial afterglow plus too much government
Moritz explains Britain's predicament as "the residue of imperial arrogance": the pound was once the world's reserve currency, Britain had the world's largest navy and was the global hegemon, then that position was taken by a more entrepreneurial country, and Britain never recovered from the loss — everything since has been a weak, low-grade stress response. He concedes Britain went through a cycle where government was the answer, and through Thatcher and later Blair, Brown and Cameron, when government was not seen as the answer, but his conclusion is that Britain is broadly trapped by a government that does too much.
— Michael MoritzIn China he saw where capitalism burned hottest
Moritz attributes Sequoia's nearly two decades of success in China to collective decisions, but gives his own path of observation: going to the mainland in person, having many preconceptions washed away, then quickly realising that if you wanted to see where capitalism burned hottest in the early 21st century, it wasn't in America but in China — despite everyone talking about the Communist Party and state control. The mechanism he offers: there was almost no social safety net, so people had only education or their wits to live by. He also concedes that the last few years have tightened a great deal, and the atmosphere and conditions are no longer the same.
— Michael MoritzIn their own words · checked verbatim
They’re too self-absorbed. They aren’t curious. They don’t understand that every individual has a story, and on the whole, with every individual, the more that you dig, the more interesting it becomes. They don’t know how to ask questions, and they don’t know how to listen.
Michael Moritz17:08
The one lesson that I took from working on my book was you can never have enough passports.
Michael Moritz31:56
Frank Auerbach carried his obsession to new heights. He painted every day of the year, save for one, which was Christmas Day, when he treated himself to a day off and went to Brighton to go to the Brighton Pier on Christmas Day. Then later in life, he decided that, actually, the one day he was taking off was stealing time from painting, so he abandoned his trips to Brighton. There’s an obsessive for you.
Michael Moritz41:30
if you wanted a country where capitalism was ablaze in the early 21st century, really ablaze, it wasn’t in the US, it was in China
Michael Moritz44:41
It made me want to control my own calendar rather than have others control my calendar.
Michael Moritz52:27
I think it’s the ones you want around your deathbed.
Michael Moritz53:11
I don’t think Britain has ever recovered from the loss of the position of primacy. Everything, since then, has been a somewhat feeble, muted reaction to it
Michael Moritz55:15
Figures
| Citizenship Moritz applied for and has obtained | German citizenship (obtained) | 30:53 |
| Number of venture firms Moritz wrote to for a job | 5 firms, 4 rejected him | 37:04 |
| When Moritz was diagnosed with blood cancer | About twenty years ago | |
| Year Crankstart began supporting the Booker Prize | 2019 | 0:00 |
Glossary
- Ausländer
- The title of Moritz's new book, German for "foreigner", about his family's flight and exile.
- Crankstart
- The philanthropic vehicle of Moritz and his wife Harriet, which funds the Booker Prize among other things.
- Booker Prize
- Britain's most important annual fiction prize, funded by Crankstart since 2019.
- Neue Sachlichkeit
- A 1920s German art movement; Otto Dix belongs to this lineage.
How to listen
For founders and investors interested in venture origin stories, family-history writing, British decline and charity operations; also worth it for anyone who wants first-hand observations of Steve Jobs and Don Valentine.
4:57 to 13:00, the art collecting and Chagall chat — the lowest information density.