At a private dinner at the RAF Club on Piccadilly, Sir Michael talked us through some of the key facets that have informed his life, covering at times difficult issues around anti-semitism, the loss of family during the war and the echoes of that history in today’s British and American societies. All this during the technology driven societal upheaval – of which he had a front row seat for over 4 decades.
Some of the key takeaways from the dinner:
1) The importance of family: once you get later on in life, you start to value it perhaps more than at any other time in your life, reflecting on the essence of who you are, where you come from and how those things impacted the way life unfurled.
2) The precarious position the world is in: whether it’s Trump’s anti-immigration stance, or the AfD in Germany, as a Jewish man Sir Michael is acutely aware of extremist viewpoints and how we must work hard to avoid repeating history.
3) The impact of AI on society: Sir Michael felt the effects of AI and automation would be felt most strongly in lower skilled white collar workers. To avoid population stress, training and government policy interventions would be key.
Sir Michael Moritz was born in Cardiff, studied Modern History at Oxford and began his career as a journalist at Time magazine in the US in the late 1970s. It was during this period that he met the young Steve Jobs and began work on the first book about Apple, The Little Kingdom: the Private Story of Apple Computer, which was published in 1984 and has become an industry classic.
Moritz co-wrote a second business book, Going for Broke: The Chrysler Story, before changing career in 1986 and joining Sequoia Capital, based in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. In 2009, almost thirty years after it was first published, Moritz revised and expanded his book on Apple in The Return to the Little Kingdom. In 2012 he became chairman of Sequoia Capital.
In 2013 he was appointed KBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for his services to promoting British economy and his family’s philanthropic work.