Heidi Roizen Managing Director, Softbank

Jeffrey Rayport: Since April '99, you have been involved in some very interesting things at Softbank that you refer to with a rather unusual term: not venture capitalism, but mentor capitalism. What is it?

Heidi Roizen: To me it was a way to describe what I really spend my time doing. I think in Silicon Valley today money is a commodity. I mean there is so much money running around the Valley. There are people starting up, you know, Joe's Bail Bond and Venture Capital. Everything is venture capital. And so when I was an entrepreneur raising money, what I realized is it wasn't like you just turned on the spigot and money came out; what you really got was a team.

Interestingly, unlike when you have to recruit people, this is a team who paid you to become part of your team. And what I think is much more important than the money is who you get on your team. To me, a lot of it is mentoring. It's getting in there and coaching CEOs, helping them make decisions, helping them recruit, being a shoulder for them to cry on. It's lonely at the top when you're the CEO and you can't commiserate with all the people around you. And so I really look at the role of venture capital today as really more mentoring than anything else. And that's where I focus my time.

Rayport: So capital becomes the commodity and mentoring becomes the level of differentiation that gives companies an advantage as you help create them?

Roizen: Absolutely.