Valley startups rising up from the graveyard

When Dave Kellogg arrived at Sequoia Capital on that day in early October 2008, "the last chair in the room was in the front row," he recalled. "My penance for being a little bit late."

Kellogg is the CEO of Mark Logic, a startup that helps business clients make sense of the chaos of unstructured data. He wound up with an excellent seat for an auspicious moment in...