subject: Founder of Homebuilding Company Shea Homes - Edmund H. Shea, Jr. Dies at Age 80 (Part I) [print this page] Founder of Homebuilding Company Shea Homes - Edmund H. Shea, Jr. Dies at Age 80 (Part I)
The cause of Shea's death was attributed to pulmonary fibrosis.
In the 1960s, Mr. Shea pioneered venture investing and offered early stage capital for Hambrecht & Quist, which became a well-known technology investment banking company located in San Francisco. Throughout the following 40 years, Mr. Shea made early investments in hundreds of new businesses, such as Activision, Adobe, Altera Corporation, Brocade, Compaq Computer, Genentech, Affymax, America West Airlines, AES Corporation, and Peet's Coffee & Tea. Fabrinet, a start-up that Shea helped fund in 2000, successfully completed its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in August 2010.
Taught to be an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shea did not fit the typecast of a typical venture capitalist. He invested only his personal and his family's money and so could be a particularly elastic and tolerant investor. He often explored Silicon Valley solo, lugging a canvas bag packed with documents to meet entrepreneurs one-on-one and question them smoothly about their thoughts and business ideas.
"Although Ed personally directed a very large venture capital investment portfolio, he did it without the usual cadre of MBA underlings," said William Brody, President of the Salk Institute in La Jolla California, president emeritus of Johns Hopkins University and formerly CEO of Resonex, a venture startup. "He did his own due diligence and formed his own judgments."
Shea regularly told others that he "invested in people, before technology." As Bill Hambrecht, co-founder of Hambrecht & Quist stated: "He never ignored the human element in any decision, and was always willing to take a chance on people with character."
