What It's Really Like Being a VC (feat. Stewart Alsop II)

Sa.

Hi, my name is Stuart Allsopp and this is my podcast, Crazy Wisdom, where I interview creative people about how they work with and manage the stress that is inherent in creative work. What I've realized over the past 10 years of my research is that anybody who is creating something of value that is significantly different from what has come before is considered crazy. Most of us have a fear, an ingrained fear of going crazy. So what I'm saying is grab onto that fear, realize that it's there, and just go with it. Because the problems we're going to be facing over the next 20 years acquire crazy people in order to solve them.

Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. My guest here is Stuart Alsop, my father. Can you introduce yourself?

Sure. Well, now you know I'm Stuart's father. Plus I have a 45 year careers, first as a journalist and then as a venture capitalist. And I'm now a partner with Gilman, Louis and Allsop Louis Partners, a boutique venture capital firm.

Nice. And what are the different stresses that are associated with journalism as opposed to venture capital?

Well, they're distinctly different businesses and most people don't understand, why should they? In journalism, your job is to deliver wisdom news insight to your readers and to do it before anybody else does it. So the pressure and the stress is how do you find out stuff, how do you report it to your audience, and how accurate is it? When I switched careers from being a journalist to being a venture capitalist, I used to tell people. Well, I still tell people that I went from being paid not to make money, because in journalism, you're not supposed to profit from your information to being paid to make massive amounts of money. Because in venture capital, it's a high risk investment thesis and you're supposed to deliver higher than average returns to your investors. You get compared to every other venture capitalist. So the stress is figuring out, is this company you're investing in going to pay out enough to actually make you a good venture capitalist so you can continue to raise money? Very different stresses.