It has been a week in the Valley for the books.
As all of the industry’s ugliness comes to light, I am forced to call a time out and reflect on why I wanted to be in this business in the first place. Underneath the surface of this question, lays an even bigger question: What does a successful VC look like to me?
From my discussions with GPs, it seems like everyone has their own definition. To some, a successful VC is the one who has the fancy startups next to their name on their Twitter handle (i.e. early investor in @Uber). To others, a successful VC is one who took their learnings from their time at a16z and applied it to start their own company. And to a few, a successful VC is one who built a generation of companies that will contribute to a more healthy workforce.
To me, I have realized that so much of what I want out of being a VC is not the picking, not the glamour and glitz, it’s the boring, unsexy part of being an ecosystem builder. This may in large part be a function of my background. Working across almost 5 different industries — federal government, local government, philanthropy, CPG, startups and now VC — will do that to you. I see implicit connections that require fluency in the language of different institutions.
This fluency inspires me to build bigger, larger, more stable bridges, than narrow silos.
That doesn’t mean that picking great companies doesn’t matter. If you want to stay in business past Fund I, it definitely does! But I refuse to pick companies or entrepreneurs who are not as committed to building the type of VC ecosystem that is required for it to flourish — diverse, empathetic even when it hurts and driven to do things the right way, not the fast way.
My thoughts are that these are the kinds of people who, once successful, will remember what being without power felt like so well that they never corrupt themselves with it.
I’m excited to see what happens as the bad actors are excluded from the party, leaving space open for the many different types of VCs to finally get their invitations. The ones who are here not just for the power, but for far more interesting, nuanced and inspiring reasons.