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Kevin Landis

ARCHETYPE

The Disruptor

Contrarian and drawn to the edge; challenges the settled answer.

Kevin Landis is The Disruptor because he moves before consensus forms and outside the boundaries conventional fund logic permits. He founded Silicon Valley's first engineer-run tech mutual fund when no template existed, took a position in Netflix long before it became a household name, and excavated an obscure regulatory provision to build a venture-style public fund. Market agreement has never validated his decisions. Conviction that the window closes fast has driven them instead.

IN THEIR WORDS, WHY DISRUPTOR

I couldn't believe there was no high tech mutual fund based in Silicon Valley, and I couldn't believe that I couldn't find any examples of tech funds that were run by engineers. If I don't do this, I'm going to regret it for a really long time.

FOUNDING FIRSTHAND FUNDS IN 1994

The time to invest in Netflix was when you never heard of Netflix. Some of our best years performance-wise were when other people were falling in love with the stocks that we already owned.

PHILOSOPHY ON EARLY-STAGE TECH INVESTING

We realized there was an obscure branch of the forty Act that talked about business development companies. We went back to the original version — we can make this a venture capital portfolio.

CREATING PUBLICLY TRADED VC FUND STRUCTURE

MASTERS IN BUSINESS

Masters in Business: “Kevin Landis on Technology Investments (Podcast)”

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Kevin's full six-dimension Leadership Index profile is held pending their validation. The archetype shown is the OTA analyst-rated read. How we read a leader →

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