Warren V. Musser, who went by the name Pete, died early last week at 92. He was one of the global giants of venture capital. It is no exaggeration to say that in the pantheon of investing — in startup and early-stage companies — Pete was as big (although not as well known) as his peers such John Doerr, Bill Draper, Don Valentine and other luminaries from Silicon Valley.

Pete’s almost seven-decade record puts him in the conversation as one of the greatest venture capitalists and successful investors in the history of the planet. The case could be made that Pete’s track record was better than any one of those guys without the benefit of the Stanford or Cal Berkley startup machine. He didn’t have a big-time research university focused on turning out commercial companies.

Yet the names of his unicorn companies are household names: Comcast, Franklin Mint, QVC and Novell to name a few. One of his greatest investments is the Internet Capital Group, whose founder, Walter “Buck” Buckley, literally learned the venture investment world by carrying Pete’s briefcase. ICG, which went public right in the middle of the dot.com boom, had boasted three executives whose paper stock was worth $2.5 billion or greater.

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