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If there were an "iron man" award for VCs, Dick Kramlich of New Enterprise Associates (NEA) would be on the short list every year. The co-founder and general partner of NEA has been injecting capital and wisdom into startup IT companies since 1978-a time when most of the Internet CEOs he backs were sucking on pacifiers. Kramlich has invested in six fledgling companies that have grown into billion-dollar market bellwethers-among them Ascend Communications Inc. (being acquired by Lucent Technologies Inc.), Silicon Graphics Inc. and 3Com Corp. And he has survived some corporate dogfights-including Convergent Technology's near-acquisition of 3Com in 1986.
With all that history, you could almost forgive a man for being jaded and worldweary; Kramlich is neither. He talks about "the triumph of the human spirit," "open-ended missions" and "team players." In addition, he has a fresh enthusiasm for all things Internet-betting on innovative companies such as Financial Engines Inc. (advice for individual investors), Juniper Networks Inc. (big, fast routers), Com21 Inc. (cable...