The 140-word Wikipedia entry on Benjamin M. Rosen hardly does him justice. For more than a decade — starting in 1980 when he left Morgan Stanley and co-founded Sevin Rosen Management — Ben Rosen was personal computing’s most influential power broker, a visionary financier who backed dozens of high-tech start-ups, including Compaq, Citrix, Cyprus, Lotus, Silicon Graphics and Electronic Arts.

The man Mike Moritz in
The Little Kingdom
described as looking like a “demure orthodontist, with thinning silver hair and owl-eyed spectacles” was also Apple’s (AAPL) best friend on Wall Street in the late 70s and early 80s. In his blog Through Rosen-colored glasses Rosen, now 78, reminisced Saturday about the early days, the middle years, and his last contact with Steve Jobs — a 2007 e-mail to let him know that the former chairman of Compaq had happily switched to a Mac.

Jobs’ reply:

From: Steve Jobs
Subject: Re: 30 years later — from Ben Rosen
Date: August 1, 2007 7:58:57 PM EDT
To: Benjamin M. Rosen

Ben,

Sorry for my delayed reply – I was on a much needed family vacation for the past three weeks.

Wow – this news makes my day! I’m glad to hear it. I hope you like what we’ve done with the Mac. I’m biased, of course, but I think its light years ahead of Windows.

How are you doing? We haven’t seen each other in years, but I remember the times we spent together very fondly.

All the best,

Steve

See also: What’s in the Steve Jobs book.