Mr. Poor Fred Nazem

Poor Fred Nazem has got it bad.The twenty year veteran of venture capital Has been thrice bitten by Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Kamran Elahian.With each successive nibble Mr. Nazem has become increasingly giddy over the ideas proffered forth by the Iranian-born founder of Cirrus Logic Inc.

"We believe he has focused on how to make a real personal, personal computer," babbles Mr. Nazem excitedly."Of course we can make a mistake.But in this business, you have got to have a feel for an investment.And we've got a feeling about this.We think this thing could go jillions."

The dung that Mr. Nazem thinks will sell jillions isn't likely to make the fast-talking New York venture capitalist rich soon.
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Last September, Mr. Nazem's venture capital concern, New York's Nazem and Company, along with four Bay Area venture investors, seeded the Mountain View startup with a fat $5 million purse.Menlo Park's Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Sequoia Capital, Associated Venture Investors (AVI) and San Francisco's Walden Group joined Mr. Nazem in biting into the rich deal-the company's pre-money valuation was $7.5 million, putting the post-money valuation at $12.5 million, according to a source very close to the transaction.
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But the 34-year-old Mr. Elahian got to be a "big thinker, " as Mr. Nazem puts it, by way of two Silicon Valley successes.
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CAE was a pioneer in computer-aided engineering, and its founder, by then a naturalized U.S. citizen, lured Mr. Nazem into the deal.
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But even back then it was not the product that caught Mr. Nazem's fancy; it was Mr. Elahian's ability to see opportunities.
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Although a millionaire by age 30, Mr. Elahian kept thinking and his next idea-to build an innovative semiconductor company that tapped into markets worldwide-was even bigger than his first, Mr. Nazem admits.
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But Mr. Nazem and a half dozen other venture capitalists cast logic aside and eventually put $30 million into Mr. Elahian's Milpitas-based Cirrus Logic.
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Adds an equally agitated Mr. Nazem of Nazem and Company, "The guy can come up with a great team.
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The group sends shivers through Mr. Nazem."I love saying that if you have got the right plan and the right people, then you can build the right product," he says.
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"When we were in Japan and told people about his plan," Mr. Nazem says, "their jaws dropped down.