I had the opportunity to guest lecture to the Student Investment Fund class at Oklahoma State University this week. I was there to talk to the students about the venture capital industry and what I do as a partner at Spur Capital. I prepared a list of topics to discuss just in case the students were disengaged, but I was pleasantly surprised by their keen … Continue reading Give Back by Talking to Others About What You Do
My partners and I just completed a two-day marketing trip to the East Coast to meet with prospective investors in New York City and Boston. The meetings went well, however what I want to write about is not the meetings but about some of the travel obstacles we encountered on this particular trip. I am a very positive person, but when it comes to travel … Continue reading The Best Tip to Remember for Business Travelers
This blog post was written in collaboration with one of my partners at Spur Capital, Paul Gompers. It is a delight to work with Paul as he is widely respected in the venture capital community and his professional and personal accomplishments seem endless. Paul’s research on the topic of performance persistence in entrepreneurship was used throughout this blog post. We hope you enjoy it. … Continue reading Spur Thoughts on Performance Persistence in Venture Capital
In the last several weeks I have spent a lot of time thinking about the current environment of the venture capital industry. At a high level it may seem like an inefficient market because the flow of information is quasi-directional and there are only a handful of firms capable of tracking it. Be that as it may, those of us who rely on this information … Continue reading My Perspective on Hot Topics in Venture Capital, Part 3 – Valuations and Exits
I recently attended a conference for one of our fund managers and the keynote speaker was none other than Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and Co-Chair and Trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For the 0.0001% of you who may not know who Bill Gates is, he co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen and the two of them grew it to become … Continue reading Expanding Your Frame of Mind and Thinking Bigger
One of the skills I’m trying to hone are my critical thinking skills. I majored in civil engineering and have been formally trained on the process of solving complex problems. When I worked as an engineer, the problems I was solving needed to have a definitive answer. Otherwise, there could be catastrophic failure. But now that I work with venture capital firms, the process of … Continue reading Improving Your Critical Thinking Skills Will Make You a Better Leader
When I was in the seventh grade I had just started to develop an interest in sports and decided I needed to find a sport to play. I had never played organized sports before, so I decided I would keep an open mind and just start trying things out. The first sport I attempted to play was baseball. I had never played before so naturally … Continue reading How Saying “No” Makes You and Everyone Around You Better
Over the last several weeks my team and I have been in the process of marketing our next fund. Collectively, we have probably traveled over 10,000+ miles (by plane) in the last 60 to 90 days talking to potential investors. We’ve been to Boston, Chicago, Tulsa, London, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Austin, Oklahoma City, Houston, Baltimore, Portland, and Vancouver (WA). In each place we go we normally … Continue reading Pattern Recognition
It has been tremendously difficult to choose one topic per week to write about from the Art of War because the book is filled with SO many different topics to choose from that I think are all worth writing about. One theme from the book that I have been pondering is the strategy of staying in one place and not moving until you have a … Continue reading The Art of War Series – Part II – Move Only When You Have the Advantage
At the start of the new year I made a decision to formalize my reading practices by committing to read a minimum of one hour each day. So far it has been going great and I find that I’m reading a lot more than the minimum each day. I start reading at 6am and usually wrap up about 7:30am or 8am. I find it relaxing … Continue reading The Art of War Series – Part I – “Preparation”
