Don Valentine
E95932
Don Valentine was a pioneering Silicon Valley venture capitalist and founder of Sequoia Capital, known for early investments in companies like Apple and Cisco.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Don Valentine canonical | 3 |
| Donald Thomas Valentine | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T638461 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Don Valentine Context triple: [Fairchild Semiconductor, notableEmployee, Don Valentine]
-
A.
Jan Porcellis
Jan Porcellis was a prominent Dutch Golden Age marine painter renowned for his atmospheric seascapes and innovative treatment of light and weather.
-
B.
Brian VanDeMark
Brian VanDeMark is an American historian and author known for his work on U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War, including coauthoring influential studies of that conflict.
-
C.
Charley St. James
Charley St. James is a fictional character from the American prime-time soap opera "Falcon Crest," which centers on the intrigues and power struggles surrounding a California wine dynasty.
-
D.
Richmond Valentine
Richmond Valentine is the eccentric billionaire and eco-terrorist villain in the action-spy film "Kingsman: The Secret Service."
-
E.
Sam De Grasse
Sam De Grasse was a Canadian-born silent film actor best known for his villainous roles in early Hollywood adventure and drama films.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Don Valentine Target entity description: Don Valentine was a pioneering Silicon Valley venture capitalist and founder of Sequoia Capital, known for early investments in companies like Apple and Cisco.
-
A.
Jan Porcellis
Jan Porcellis was a prominent Dutch Golden Age marine painter renowned for his atmospheric seascapes and innovative treatment of light and weather.
-
B.
Brian VanDeMark
Brian VanDeMark is an American historian and author known for his work on U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War, including coauthoring influential studies of that conflict.
-
C.
Charley St. James
Charley St. James is a fictional character from the American prime-time soap opera "Falcon Crest," which centers on the intrigues and power struggles surrounding a California wine dynasty.
-
D.
Richmond Valentine
Richmond Valentine is the eccentric billionaire and eco-terrorist villain in the action-spy film "Kingsman: The Secret Service."
-
E.
Sam De Grasse
Sam De Grasse was a Canadian-born silent film actor best known for his villainous roles in early Hollywood adventure and drama films.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (44)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
businessperson
ⓘ
company founder ⓘ human ⓘ investor ⓘ venture capitalist ⓘ |
| awardReceived | Lifetime Achievement in Venture Capital (NVCA) ⓘ |
| basedIn | Silicon Valley ⓘ |
| birthDate | 1932-06-26 ⓘ |
| birthPlace |
Yonkers, New York
ⓘ
surface form:
Yonkers, New York, United States
|
| boardMemberOf |
Apple Inc.
ⓘ
surface form:
Apple Computer
Atari, Inc. ⓘ
surface form:
Atari
Cisco Systems ⓘ Electronic Arts ⓘ Oracle Corporation ⓘ
surface form:
Oracle
|
| citizenship | United States of America ⓘ |
| deathDate | 2019-10-25 ⓘ |
| education | Fordham University ⓘ |
| employer |
Fairchild Semiconductor
ⓘ
National Semiconductor ⓘ |
| familyName | Valentine ⓘ |
| fieldOfWork |
technology investing
ⓘ
venture capital ⓘ |
| founded | Sequoia Capital ⓘ |
| founder | Don Valentine self-linksurface differs ⓘ |
| fullName |
Don Valentine
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Donald Thomas Valentine
|
| givenName | Donald ⓘ |
| industry |
semiconductors
ⓘ
technology ⓘ |
| influenced | development of Silicon Valley startup ecosystem ⓘ |
| knownFor |
early investment in Apple Computer
ⓘ
early investment in Atari ⓘ early investment in Cisco Systems ⓘ early investment in Electronic Arts ⓘ early investment in Oracle ⓘ founding Sequoia Capital ⓘ shaping Silicon Valley venture capital industry ⓘ |
| nationality | American ⓘ |
| notableWork | building Sequoia Capital into leading venture firm ⓘ |
| occupation |
business executive
ⓘ
entrepreneur ⓘ venture capitalist ⓘ |
| positionHeld |
marketing executive at Fairchild Semiconductor
ⓘ
vice president of marketing at National Semiconductor ⓘ |
| residence |
Woodside, California
ⓘ
surface form:
Woodside, California, United States
|
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Don Valentine Description of subject: Don Valentine was a pioneering Silicon Valley venture capitalist and founder of Sequoia Capital, known for early investments in companies like Apple and Cisco.
Referenced by (4)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
Donald Thomas Valentine
subject surface form:
Sequoia Capital