I remember walking around with Tom Ford when he owned 3000 Sand Hill Road, which at the time was the most famous address for venture capitalists (now it might be Rosewood or Hero City in San Mateo, California).

Recognizing that his venture capitalist friends were beginning to get wealthy and that they tended to work together, but had few employees, Tom built out four office buildings with many small offices where many small teams could reside in each building. He made the offices luxurious and tailored, but he made the buildings open and communal so people could both have their own space but still feel like they were part of a community.

Tom initially went around recruiting venture capitalists to move into his space. At first, people balked since the buildings were out on a hill in the middle of nowhere. Most people, my father included, wanted to stay in Palo Alto, where they would have more of a “status” address. No one had heard of Menlo Park, but Palo Alto was considered one of the big cities of the peninsula. But Tom kept at it and finally recruited some top venture capitalists to come work at the Sand Hill Road location.

It became known as the place for venture capitalists. The press wrote it up regularly as the venture capitalist’s equivalent of Wall Street. Tom was a big success. The property is probably worth nearly $1 billion today. Walking around 3000 Sand Hill Road with Tom Ford was enlightening. He showed me around the property with great pride. Four times he bent down to pick up cigarette butts. He made mental notes of a drain that had been bent and some paint that had unwittingly covered a square centimeter of a window. He noticed a car he recognized from a tenant that was parked in a “visitor” spot. He asked what else he could do to make the property more attractive to the young venture capitalists. He was an owner. And a good one. Owners think like owners. They think long term. They work to delight their customers, and no detail is too small to take care of on the spot, right there and then.

By contrast, my fraternity, the Kappa Alpha House on the Stanford campus, was a rental. Forty college boys (including myself) each paid about $300 per month to stay in a building that was built in a similar style to the buildings at 3000 Sand Hill Road. But we were renters. We knew that not only did we not have any vested interest in long-term livability in the house but also that we would only be living in our rooms for …