When the San Francisco Giants play in windy Candlestick Park, a man with owlish spectacles, tight lips, an aquiline nose and a stern gaze usually sits in a front-row seat, 70 ft. from home plate. Arthur Rock, 57, has been a Giants fan for 25 years, watching batters try to sort curve balls from sliders and change-ups from screwballs. Since the late 1950s. Rock has been carefully scrutinizing pitches of another kind—start-up bids by young technology companies—and when he goes for one of these, he rarely misses. Says San Francisco Venture Capitalist Thomas Perkins: "Arthur Rock is the best long-ball hitter around."
And what a string of hits. In 1957 Rock assisted in arranging the financing for Fairchild Semiconductor, one of the first companies to make the silicon chips that are the building blocks for modern computers. In 1960 Rock helped finance Teledyne, a California conglomerate that makes a range of products that include Water Piks and jet engines. Last year it had sales of $3 billion. In 1961, the year he co-founded the Davis & Rock venture capital firm, Rock put up $280,000 to help start Scientific Data Systems, a computer maker; in 1969 the company was sold for some $950 million. In 1968 Rock was one of the three founders of Intel, the first company to make a computer on a chip. Last February IBM paid $250 million for a 12% interest in the firm, and has since increased its holding to 17.5%. In 1978 Rock invested $57,400 in a fledgling personal-computer company with a whimsical name: Apple. Six years ago, he helped launch Diasonics, a manufacturer of medical instruments; when it went public last year, it was valued at more than $1 billion.
Through these and other deals, Rock has amassed a personal fortune estimated to be at least $200 million. Rock does not talk about his wealth, saying only, "I don't like people to count my money. That isn't what turns me on."
Rock shuns publicity and is so secretive that he amounts to a sort of mysterious force in the financial world. Doing business simply under the name of Arthur Rock & Co., he works out of a modest office in San Francisco's financial district with only a secretary for a staff. Rock's closest friend is Egyptian-born Financier Fayez Sarofim, who is based in Houston.
Unlike other venture capitalists. Rock has few private investors as clients and hence is under little outside pressure. Rock invests slices of his own fortune and the money of a few close friends, limiting himself to three or four deals a year. He makes sure that the companies he finances are close to his office so that he does not have to travel much. Rock looks for ideas, people and products that together can form the keystones for major new industries. He is almost always one step ahead of fashion and never expects a quick payoff. He makes up his mind swiftly, acts decisively, moves quietly and seems to have an impeccable sense for where technology and markets will meet. Says California Financier Max Palevsky, who made a fortune as a founder of Scientific Data Systems, a mainframe computer maker that Xerox acquired in 1969 for $950 million: "Arthur has an incredible intuition. His nose never ceases to amaze me."