British-American venture capitalist, born in Cardiff in 1954 to parents who had fled Nazi Germany. He ran Sequoia Capital, the venture-capital firm that helped fund Silicon Valley titans including Google and YouTube. He has lived in California since 1976.
In 2006 Sir Michael was diagnosed with blood cancer, caused by a gene more common among Ashkenazi Jewish men than in the general population. A doctor told him he would not live to see 70; he has. His memoir "Ausländer" (Outsider), published in 2026, traces his parents' escape from Germany and their displacement in Britain. His father Alfred won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, and became a professor and academic dean; along with 27,000 other Italian and German men over 16, he had been interned as an "Enemy Alien" on the Isle of Man during the second world war.
I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.