Inside Angel Investing: Chris Mairs’ Embarrassingly Long History of Getting it Right

Telecom software maker Metaswitch Networks was bootstrapped for the first 25 years of its profitable existence before the team decided to take outside investors including Sandhill Road standout Sequoia Capital. A few years after Sequoia invested in the London-based company, Chris Mairs, who was Metaswitch’s chief scientist, asked a Sequoia partner what the key requirements were for investing in a company. As Mairs recalls the conversation, the Sequoia partner highlighted three things. 1. The people. 2. The business needed to be quite young so there was plenty of opportunity for growth. 3. The Sequoia team needed to be able to bicycle from Sandhill Road to the company’s head offices. Metaswitch had only one of those right. The only one that mattered.