Brave New (Venture) World

"Venture capitalist." This is a fairly new term in my vocabulary.

But I think I might be one. 

Let's back up: I remember walking into a new venture group when I started my MBA at W.P. Carey as I was working on an idea for an ed-tech startup with one of my MBA colleagues. As we sat down, the director of the group, Brent Sebold, told us that he is a "want-repreneur." We all chuckled in delight. "You, too?" he retorted and let out a sigh of relief. He was in good company.

But there was a tinge of something subtle, sad, and also hopeful about his (and our) adopted moniker. First, like Brent, we're all going to try to venture off on our own at some point and wade into something we believe will be a success. We'll be wrong. We'll fail a lot. But there is a silver lining of success in just being the kind of person who is willing to take the plunge.

Don't believe me? Just this morning, in a required entrepreneurship course (oxymoron?), two of my classmates debated whether they'd be able/willing to put in the work and time it takes to be an entrepreneur. For me, there was a small victory in hearing that and knowing I'm that type of person. When they turned around to ask what I thought, I offered up, "If you're passionate enough about your idea, you'll be willing to not sleep."

Venture Capitalism + Entrepreneurship ("two sides of the same coin")

I loved watching the documentary Something Ventured about the genesis of the venture capital industry in Silicon Valley. While Fairchild (now ON Semiconductor) and the other aspects were mildly interesting, I wasn't hugely impressed with the traitorous eight. They and Steve Jobs, while all were visionary entrepreneurs in their own rights, started off as rebellious, potentially lazy, qet-rich-quick-inclined, and sometimes just downright poor-mannered.

Funnily enough, I instead found myself more drawn to the personalities of those men who enabled them. The angels and VCs: Pitch Johnson, Arthur Rock, Tom Perkins, Don Valentine and the rest. Some were casual and calm. Others had their quirks and ticks. Still others had glowing personalities and beaming smiles. But as a group, these men thought differently and expected a standard of excellence of themselves and the entrepreneurs they worked with. Most of all, they sought to maximize the potential of not only the deals they dealt, but the people they touched along the way. This is a quality I hope to engender.

While the founding fathers of the VC world may seem largely dominated by older, white males who were in the right place at the right time, I think it's important to see that we are standing on the shoulders of giants who cobbled together an industry with revenues that now account for more than 20 percent of U.S. GDP.