VCs Agree That Leadership Makes A Difference

We had two “Venture Capitalists” as guest speakers this past week: Melissa Guzy (Managing Director in Asia for Vantage Point Venture Partners) on Saturday with the part-time MBA students and Carol Sands (Managing General Partner, The Halo Fund) on Monday with the full-time MBA students. They were each delightful, warm and engaging, candid, informative, and opinionated (in a good sense).

Melissa continued a theme that we have heard from all of our guest speakers that “managing people (leading people) is the same all over the world. People are people!” She did point out that just because you have a title, this doesn’t mean that you either are the leader or necessarily have leadership skills (these are in short supply, Carol will tell us, for entrepreneurs). Melissa did maintain, however, that leadership capability is the key variable in making decisions about whether to invest or not in new start-up ventures. One hallmark of great leaders, she felt, was that they were comfortable hiring people smarter than themselves, and that they were able to pull together a team of greatness (more than the sum of its parts, which allows for some individual weaknesses).

It is very important to know your values and vision, especially because persistence (and passion) will be required in order for new ventures to survive. This means that you have to be willing to be introspective and ask yourself why you are or are not being effective. Leaders, she maintained, need to be lifelong learners. Similarly, she asserted that you have to be willing to lead from the front. Melissa says that she likes to test her theories on herself first and then is willing to risk it all for her beliefs in the process of setting an example for others. Finally, she warned us about being dishonest – “I’m not as concerned that people may make a mistake as I am that they try to hide it or blame it on others.” Doing so is the deal-killer for her.

Carol led us through her upbringing and journey from Normal, Illinois to being a VC and it certainly wasn’t quite a straight path. She sees her current core competence and one that serves venture capitalists well as “learning and transferring knowledge.” This was in keeping with her viewpoint, and advice to all the high-achievers in the audience, that “when you are given extraordinary opportunities you have an extraordinary responsibility to give back.” Much of her own work with first-time entrepreneurs is making sure that they don’t make “old” mistakes (those already made by her and others).

It’s important, according to Carol, that as entrepreneurs and leaders you don’t let yourself fall in love with the product or technology but rather you have to believe (fall in love) with the people. As other guest speakers have pointed out, the products/technology doesn’t pay you back, it’s the people who do. She said that entrepreneurs take offense at being told they might not be good leaders, but that most of them agreed that they weren’t necessarily good or knew much about business, and this was the leverage point at which “leadership coaching” could be addressed. A key rule for success (internally), she maintained, is making sure that there are “no secrets” – you need to take the time to make certain that everyone agrees on where you want to be even if there are differences about how to get there. For her own part, she claimed being very good at identifying problems even if she didn’t always necessarily know how to solve them. “You’ve got to be willing to ask for help, or you get yourself, and your organization, into lots of trouble.”

If you wanted to get their insights into hot markets, upcoming technologies, where to invest in Asia/China, and the like. Well, you needed to be there!

All the best,

Barry