| Roger McNamee | |
|---|---|
McNamee, playing at a 2008 New Year's Eve show |
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| Born | May 2, 1956 Albany, New York[1] |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Yale University (B.A. 1980),[2] Tuck School of Business (M.B.A. 1982)[3] |
| Occupation | Venture capitalist, musician |
Roger McNamee (born May 2, 1956) is a founding partner of the venture capital firm Elevation Partners. Prior to co-founding the firm McNamee co-founded private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and headed the T. Rowe Price Science and Technology Fund.
McNamee is also a touring musician, first as a founding member of the Flying Other Brothers, and more recently in that group's follow-on band, Moonalice. Between the two groups, McNamee estimated in April 2009 that he has played 800 shows.[4]
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McNamee joined T. Rowe Price as an analyst in 1982, after receiving his M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business.[3]
By 1989 he was leading the firm's Science & Technology Fund, a period when the fund returned about 17% annually to investors[5] and, in a move atypical for mutual funds, he made venture capital investments in Electronic Arts (which went public in 1989) and Sybase (which had its IPO in 1991).[6]
McNamee is also a musician. He played in the band Flying Other Brothers from 1997 to 2006[7] and now plays with the band Moonalice, using the stage persona of "Chubby Wombat Moonalice".[5]
According to the New York Times, McNamee has been instrumental in arranging at least two $500,000 donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.[8][9] Roger McNamee is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's advisory board, and acts "as a special advisor to the Executive Director on business and strategy issues."[10]
Bill Gates wrote in his book The Road Ahead: "Roger was a great sounding board for many of the ideas I wrote about".[5] Mark Zuckerberg (who met McNamee in summer 2006 at a time when Facebook reportedly had buyout offers of around $750 million) said McNamee was "emphatic" that Facebook not be sold; Zuckerberg stated he "clearly cared about building something long-term and about the impact of the things we build as opposed to just making money in the short term", advice that Portfolio.com called "prescient": in October 2007, Facebook sold just 1.6 percent of the company to Microsoft for $240 million.[5]