Do Something Big

When you think of your own career progression, is there anything that you think you would do differently now in hindsight?

Well, I did think when I graduated from college that I wanted to be a general manager, as I mentioned.

Where did that even come from, by the way? You're in college and you're thinking, "I'm going to be a general manager someday." Where did that ambition and that idea come from?

I think it was this desire to do something big and in my world, you know, running a big division or running a big company was as big as it got, right? I knew I wanted to do business. I wanted to work in an organization that produced products or services or something that's adding value to the community. The general management piece was really more about I feel like I'm a leader and I want to get an opportunity to lead, and this is the best way to do that if you've got an ambition to work in business. I found out later that that really wasn't my ambition, but the progression that I took to get to that point was actually very helpful, because I had the mindset, and actually wrote this down in a detailed plan, which tells you a whole lot about my personality. But I wrote this plan that I needed to get these functional experiences. And so sales and marketing and product, etc. I had this plan to do that. It turns out that I followed that plan pretty consistently and then the skillset that I got about being a part of or in some cases running those different functional businesses actually really helps me in my venture capital job. Because what venture capitalists need to understand is how a business works, and you really only get that experience if you actually worked in those roles. I mean you certainly can read about that, you can learn some things in other ways, but nothing replaces having worked in sales or having worked in product or having worked in strategy, and I did all of that. So I think it ended up being, the path of venture capital ended up being a really good foundation for being successful as an investor because you really do need to wear all those hats to be successful.

Well, I forced you to digress, right, but I am still curious. In your career, looking back, is there anything that you would do differently in hindsight?

Yeah, I think if I had to do my career again, I probably would have spent more time in each one of the functional areas. There's something about the time in the job where you really become an expert in it. That is useful in my role. I think also being an entrepreneur sooner would have been helpful. I think working in startups before investing in startups would have been good skill for me.