Buried toward the end of the press release announcing Yammer's humongous $85 million round today was an odd name: Ronnie Lott.
Yes, it's that Ronnie Lott — the NFL Hall of Fame member who used to be one of the most feared defensive backs in the league.
He's so tough, he once chopped part of his own finger off so he could keep playing. (It was infected. He didn't want to skip a season. Check out the YouTube video below.)
But his record in tech investing hasn't been so hot: an investment firm he founded with fellow player Harris Barton collapsed in 2009 after almost 10 years and left some investors pretty mad, according to this article by Bloomberg.
Lott apparently was introduced to Yammer by venture capitalist George Zachary from Charles River Ventures.
Lott isn't the only example of the local football team crossing over with the tech scene in Silicon Valley: last year, venture capitalist and former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu joined the business side of the 49ers, and was made president earlier this year.
Here's a video about that incident where Lott chopped off his finger:
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