Becoming Yourself — Boulder Ventures Ltd.

The author hard at work on his self-esteem in the Adamant Range, British Columbia. Photo by Topher Donahue.

Mountain Guides are larger-than-life characters. Among the skills Guides acquire over a lifetime in their terrain is to project confidence and competence to clients, and then to demonstrate both in the daily conduct of their jobs. Venture Capitalists are called on to do the same thing by their investors and entrepreneurs. In addition to a track record of returning capital at a multiple, the great VCs I’ve known are equally comfortable in front of the conference crowd, at the head of the Boardroom table, or on the factory floor.

No matter how gifted you are at climbing and skiing, no matter how much experience you’ve gained before and during Business School, no one starts out that way. Instead, we create our persona over years of guiding and investing. Only with persistence and durability do we emerge and succeed as VCs and Mountain Guides.

Once we’ve acquired fundamental skills through training and experience, some of our progression is accomplished through modeling our mentors. There is no better teacher of how to act as a VC or a Mountain Guide than our role models. I was fortunate early in my career to have Merc Mercure as my mentor. A Physics PhD from CU, Merc was the founder and CEO of Ball Aerospace, the biggest company in Boulder, along with a number of successful local startups. Merc gave me my start at his fund, Colorado Venture Management in 1986, and I’ve modeled my VC persona on his combination of technical chops, business acumen, and leadership style.

Some of our progression is accomplished through peer interactions over the course of our career. Earlier in my career, finding a tribe of young VCs with whom I connected personally and professionally was a critical element in the development of my business persona. Today, I’m actively supporting a cohort of local aspirant investors in their journey. Where matters: they all live here and can ski and climb, which makes the job of sponsoring a cohesive Young Venture Mafia in Boulder much easier.

Some of our progression is accomplished through introspection. By challenging our decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, we learn to avoid heuristic traps that could lead to fatal outcomes in the mountains or on our balance sheet. Each winter in Vail, I try and take two or three days to go touring by myself to scope out new terrain and to think about how to improve on the decisions I’ve made that season. The best VCs constantly question their assumptions, not themselves.

One of my favorite movie stars is Cary Grant, who projected an incredible screen persona especially in his Alfred Hitchcock movies. But he was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England and only came by his debonair presence through a lifetime of devotion to the craft of acting.

Here’s how Cary Grant described his progression: “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until, finally, I became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point along the way.”

Like VCs and Mountain Guides, he became himself.