It had been a few years, but the thought of my children in the public eye again made my blood run cold. I answered slowly, but precisely. “I realize that to a certain extent I am newsworthy, and by extension, my wife is also, but my children are not. They are minors, and my understanding of the law is that they may not be photographed or mentioned by name without my express consent, and that consent will not be made. I do not wish to cause you trouble, but this is nonnegotiable. Is that clear, or do I need to bring one of my lawyers in?”
“Understood, sir.”
I nodded in appreciation. “Thank you, but I have my reasons.”
The issue came out a month later. I know this because Melissa came into the office after lunch carrying a half dozen copies. She came into my office with a big shit-eating grin on her face. “Carl, can I get your autograph?” She dropped one on my desk, and I just stared!
I figured we might have been part of a blurb, or maybe a boxed paragraph besides the article on private equity groups. Instead my picture was on the cover, sitting on the edge of my desk, one foot on the floor and the other dangling, a smile on my face, wearing a good gray suit. The cover article was titled, ‘The New Face Of Venture Capital’. “Oh, Holy Christ!” I exclaimed.
“You’re famous, boss!”
“You’re fired! This is all your fault! Yours and John’s. Go tell him he’s fired too! You’re all fired!”
Missy laughed at this and left a copy on my desk. You could hear the uproar throughout the place as people began reading the story.
I couldn’t help it. It was like watching a car crash in a race. You know you shouldn’t be watching it, but you can’t tear your eyes away. I knew I had work to do, but I had to read it anyway. I got up and closed the door to my office.
One of the first things Carl Buckman said to me after I introduced myself was, “I can’t imagine why anybody would want to read about me. I have got to be the most boring guy on the planet!”
Not hardly.
I rolled my eyes at that. I remembered saying it, and it looked like it was coming back to haunt me. What else had I blathered on about?
Buckman, 30, is the President and CEO of the Buckman Group, a virtually unknown private equity and capital firm. Unknown, that is, until they were discovered to be the venture capitalists behind three of the biggest and hottest tech IPOs of the past decade. Now they hold ownership positions and board seats on three of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley — Microsoft, Adobe, and Autodesk — and they are just getting started.
The company is the creation of Carl Buckman, one of the most intriguing Renaissance men to be seen in recent years. In an industry filled with accountants and lawyers, he is neither. His own story is even more interesting than that of his company. A combination of triumph and tragedy, he is one of the most unique individuals to shake up Wall Street in recent history.
I debated crossing things out with a black Magic Marker, but realized I would do better with a paint brush. I wondered if the fire sprinklers would go off if I burned the thing. I kept reading.
Physically, Buckman is just under six foot tall, with a tough and wiry build. His nose was obviously broken and never rebuilt properly. He is extremely fit; he spends an hour every morning exercising and lifting weights. His voice is a gravelly baritone, and he speaks with a distinct southern accent. He is normally courteous and well spoken, but that can change. When I asked if I could meet his wife and family, for background purposes, the temperature of the room dropped precipitously, and I was told in no uncertain terms that his children were off limits. “Or else!” Buckman is extraordinarily protective of his family. He has good reason to be. More on that later. [Editor’s Note: Fortune does not publish photographs or names of minor children without a parent’s permission.]
Wait until Marilyn reads this shit! I was never going to hear the end of it!
The article seemed to alternate between segments about my personal life and discussions of what the company was doing. It was very obvious that Mr. Colvin had done his research. He had quotes from both Bill Gates and John Warnock of Adobe about what I had brought to the table besides money. A typical paragraph was:
When asked by Gates why Microsoft should accept an investment from a relatively unknown company, Buckman boldly replied, ‘Because of me. Everyone else you’ll ever deal with will be either a lawyer or accountant. I’m the only guy you’ll ever deal with who can actually understand what you do.’ Then, at the closing of the deal, after signing the paperwork, Buckman gave Gates the code, free of charge, to create a DOS menu system, the highly popular Batch Menu Builder system, which he had written in his own spare time. The program was embedded, virtually unchanged, in DOS 2 and all subsequent versions. The system, which allows average users to create DOS menu systems, was considered internally at Microsoft to be almost as valuable as the money Buckman invested.
I snorted at that. The only thing I did with that was to point out to Bill, who was notoriously non-user friendly in his coding, that somebody other than us geeks had to use the stuff. This was a big difference from my first time through, when I had to do that just for Lefleur Homes and our network. Still, the story went on.
That he could do such a thing came as no surprise to the people who know him. Carl Buckman is considered by most to be a mathematical prodigy. At the age of 14 he entered his junior high school’s science fair. Rather than get one of his teachers to help, his faculty adviser was a professor at nearby Towson State College, and the project resulted in his first two published papers. By 16 he was spending half the school day at Towson State. At 17 he was valedictorian of his high school class. At 21 he had earned his doctorate in applied mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His thesis adviser, Dr. John Rhineburg, explained that Buckman’s work provided a theoretical underpinning for advanced computer networking. Rhineburg reported that both MIT and Stanford had contacted him about offering a position to Buckman upon his graduation.
Interesting! John Rhineburg had never told me about any job offers, but maybe he just told them I was already taken.
And then he walked away from it all. When he graduated from high school he had turned down every scholarship but one. He had applied for an ROTC scholarship. Buckman has frequently commented that his family has a tradition of military service going back to the War of 1812. Every generation has produced soldiers and sailors, and it was now his turn. Even more so, rather than select the Signal Corps, where his mathematical skills would be most useful, he went through parachute and artillery training and joined the elite 82nd Airborne Division as an airborne artillery officer.
By all accounts, Buckman was as successful an Army officer as he was as a mathematician. Within three years he was commanding an artillery battery that was reportedly the finest in the division, and he was promoted twice, both times earlier than expected. Then on his final mission, now classified Top Secret, he earned a Bronze Star, very unusual during peacetime, and was injured badly enough to force his exit from the Army. He still has a limp that gets worse as the day gets longer. By the end of the day he needs a cane. He has never been heard to complain once.