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Enter Reed Hastings, CEO of NetFlix.com, Inc., current president of the California State Board of Education, and major backer of Propositions 26 and 39_measures that sought to lower the voter-threshold required to pass school bonds (the latter, which set 55 percent as the threshold, passed). Mr. Lempert had an "informal series of conversations" with Mr. Hastings, and those conversations were the deal makers.
Mr. Hastings, and then John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers venture capital firm, gave Mr. Lempert a half-million dollars in seed money to get the idea off the ground. Five months later, EdVoice has what he needs to show other prospective donors that the idea is not only off the ground, but running well. |