AS THE 1990S were drawing to a close, Jesse Devitte wasn't sure there was much of a future investing in the tech-averse AEC world. He had formed that opinion after stints as President of the AutoCAD software startup Softdesk, which went public in 1994; and then as Vice President of Autodesk's AEC Market Group after Autodesk paid $90 million to acquire Softdesk in 1996. But soon after leaving that latter post in 1998, Devitte got a phone call from Brad Schell, Co-founder of the Boulder, Colo.-based startup @Last Software. Schell and his partner, Joe Esch, were about to launch a 3D drawing application called SketchUp, and he wanted to know if Devitte was interested in getting in on the action. Devitte ultimately became an investor in and director for @Last Software from 2003 to 2006, the year it hit the jackpot when Google bought that company for somewhere between $15 million and $45 million, according to analysts' estimates.
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