Profile: Paul Holland
Meet Paul Holland
Q & A Session with the Prince George High School Class of 1978 Graduate
Were you involved in any extracurriculars while a student at Prince George High School?
I was fairly active in school groups and clubs while in Prince George. I was co-editor in chief of the yearbook and newspaper in junior high (with Barbara Kaempf). I played on the varsity tennis team, was in the FBLA, was president of the Spanish Club, acted in a few plays in Drama and helped raise money for the Literary Society. My greatest accomplishment may have been when I sold $1,000 in yearbook ads at $20 each over the summer which allowed us to produce a four-color yearbook for the first time.
I was fairly active in school groups and clubs while in Prince George. I was co-editor in chief of the yearbook and newspaper in junior high (with Barbara Kaempf). I played on the varsity tennis team, was in the FBLA, was president of the Spanish Club, acted in a few plays in Drama and helped raise money for the Literary Society. My greatest accomplishment may have been when I sold $1,000 in yearbook ads at $20 each over the summer which allowed us to produce a four-color yearbook for the first time.
Where did your journey take you after graduating high school & where are you in life now?
I went to James Madison University and graduated with degrees in Public Administration and Political Science in 1982. I did my master’s degree in Foreign Affairs at UVA and later did an MBA at the University of California, Berkeley. Before I began my professional career, I had 27 jobs in my first 23 years of life; jobs including being a commercial fisherman off the coast of Nova Scotia, working on road crews in Kill Devil Hills, NC and Harrisonburg, VA, substitute teaching in Florida and driving a taxi in Newport, Rhode Island.
Once I moved to California in 1984, I began my professional career at the Stanford Research Institute where I was a ‘human Google,’ doing business research before the launch of the graphical internet. While at SRI, I was introduced to the CEO of my first startup Pure Software. We met in a hot tub at a party at my girlfriend’s house (now my wife). His name is Reed Hastings and when I helped him get Pure Software started, he had raised $200,00 from friends and family at a $2M valuation. Five years later, after I held positions running sales in North America and then three years running our European operation from Amsterdam, we took Pure Software public and later to an acquisition by IBM for $2.5B. Reed went on to start the silly company putting DVDs in red envelopes and mailing them out to people, hoping they would mail them back. Fortunately for all of us, he is still running Netflix to this day. Reed and his wife Patty used to spend their vacations in our spare room in Amsterdam, which is why NFLX has about 1,000 employees in Holland to this day.
After Pure, I was recruited to Kana Communications where I became the number two executive and ran the global go-to-market function. We took Kana from a $13M valuation when I joined to a $9B valuation in less than three years. After Kana, I was recruited to Foundation Capital where I’ve spent the last 20 years. Foundation is a top-tier Silicon Valley venture fund. We’ve invested about $4B of investor and personal capital which has created nearly $500B in market cap including companies like Netflix, Chegg, MobileIron, SunRun, and many others. Now I work for Mach49, a venture builder for the Global 1000 that my wife Linda Yates founded eight years ago. Mach49 has offices in Singapore, Silicon Valley, Boston, London and Amsterdam. As part of my professional career, I have done extensive public outreach and have been featured in the New York Times, CNN, Forbes, Fortune and have done about 30 guest appearances on CNBC. On the creative front, I produced an award-winning documentary film called Something Ventured, which profiled the founding investments in Apple, Intel, Cisco Atari and Genentech. Something Ventured was recently enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution and was rated the number five business documentary of all time.
With my wife Linda Yates, I also produced a play called Walls: An American Story about two families whose history was profiled over a 300-year period in the New World. One family were voluntary immigrants from England and the other were involuntary immigrants from Africa. The two families merged when the young man from the English lineage met the young woman from the African lineage on the floor of the Roseland Ballroom in NYC before the young man shipped out to Europe to support the D-Day invasion in 1944. That young couple are my parents.
When you reflect on your time as a student, is there a teacher or staff member who made a lasting impact on you?
Mr. Matheny helped develop my love for history and political science and helped me mature as a person. Ms. Carlisle helped me prepare for adulthood and helped me develop more confidence in my intellectual ability. Mr. Nicholson challenged me creatively and showed how Prince George could produce first rate dramatic productions.
Do you have a special memory of your time as a PGCPS student?
I remember how great our girls’ basketball team was with Bridget Wyche as our leading player. I remember spending weekends at junior high getting the newspaper and yearbook published. I remember meeting friends for pizza after PGHS football games in the fall. I remember skipping school senior year and going to Va Beach for the day.
Finally, what is your message to the next generation of Prince George High School graduates who have and soon will be embarking on the next step of their life's journey?
I have a tremendous amount of respect for all my good friends who stayed in Prince George and have wonderful families and lives there. I love interacting with all of them at reunions and Facebook, and to this day am still learning from them. But for me, Prince George wasn’t the place for me to find my destiny. I encourage all students to travel and experience other places and cultures as soon and as often as they can. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have lived and worked in 74 countries and helped friends and colleagues generate over $25B in market cap and thousands of high paying jobs for team members in my companies.
I couldn’t have done any of that without the strong foundation I built with my friends and family in Prince George County.