Quick portrait of Dave Carlick – legendary Silicon Valley ad man, turned infamous Internet advertising guru, turned venture capitalist. Dave has seemingly done it all – from inventing the concept of internet advertising (yes he is to blame for all those ad banners) to investing in and selling companies like MySpace in their hay-days.
The first time I met Dave nothing seemed to go right. It was 1995. I was interviewing for my first job out of college and Dave was looking to hire an Internet creative type for his ad agency’s new Internet group. The interview started out normal enough but went downhill quickly when I couldn’t access my web site.
Repeated attempts and a reboot of the conference room’s computer didn’t fix things. All my work was online and sadly I hadn’t brought a book as a backup. After ten minutes of head scratching I figured that the interview was toast but Dave had other ideas. Seeing that I was really up the creek without a paddle, he said “Well, I guess you’ll just have to tell me about it.”
When the interview finally ended I thought things had gone <em>_really_</em> badly. Dave on the other hand had seen things differently and hired me despite my non-demo. Years later he admitted that he had already looked at my work and figured that if I could handle a demo disaster like that, then I was going to be good at pitching my work to clients.
Fifteen years later, Dave has been my boss, mentor, board member, client and friend. I shot this of him when we caught up for red wine and Arnold Palmers at one of his favorite places here in the valley.