Donald L. Lucas
Overview
Donald Leo Lucas was an early Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Oracle board executive-committee chairman and Cadence Design Systems chairman, with directorships including Dexcom and Macromedia.[1]
Contents7 sections
Key facts
1930–1953Early Life and Education
Born in Upland, California, on March 18, 1930, Lucas attended Stanford on a football scholarship, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1951 and an MBA in 1953.[2]
1950s–1967Entering Venture Capital
After Army service in Germany, Lucas worked at Smith Barney and Draper, Gaither & Anderson. He helped raise half of National Semiconductor’s initial equity in 1957 and became an independent venture capitalist in 1967.[2]
2001–2007Supporting Economic Policy Research
Lucas chaired Stanford’s SIEPR Advisory Board from 2001 to 2007. He and the Lucas Brothers Foundation supported researchers, students, and economics and medical facilities at Stanford.[3]
2000sEarly Theranos Investment and Chairmanship
Christopher Lucas testified in 2021 that his uncle Donald L. Lucas invested in TheranosTheranosTheranos was a blood-testing company founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes and based in Palo Alto, California, which offered retail testing with Walgreens and was valued at up to $9 billion before regulatory sanctions and criminal charges over alleged fraud in its technology and financial claims led to its dissolution in 2018.Open the full entry, was an early director and served as chairman, introducing him to Elizabeth HolmesElizabeth HolmesElizabeth Holmes is an American entrepreneur, the founder and former chief executive officer of the defunct blood-testing company Theranos, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors, sentenced to 135 months in prison, and has been serving her sentence in Texas since May 2023.Open the full entry around 2005 or 2006.[4]
2019Death and Family
Lucas died on December 27, 2019. His son Donald Alexander Lucas died less than five weeks later.[3]