In this Fund81 podcast episode, I spoke with Bill Maris, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist focused on technology and the life sciences. Bill founded early web hosting pioneer Burlee.com, now part of Web.com, and then went on to found and become the first CEO of Google Ventures or GV. Under his leadership, GV grew from 1 - 70+ team members, across seven offices and had over $3 billion under management. GV made over 350 investments including Uber, Nest, Cloudera, DocuSign, Climate Corp, 23andMe and more. He also created Google's Calico project, a multi-billion dollar company focused on the genetic basis of aging.
Bill left GV in 2016 and recently started his own fund Section 32.
In listening to other interviews with Bill, I learned two unexpected things: Bill is a practicing magician (Who knew?) and an introvert.
I am also an introvert and have been doing a lot of thinking about how my introversion plays into my life as a venture capitalist. Bill and I explore this topic in this episode.
Enjoy.
I’ve spent most of my life learning how to turn off my passion for just long enough to eat and sleep. I’ve never had to learn how to turn it on. After a recent long stretch without that passion, here's my hypothesis as to why I think it is coming back.
Read more ➞I tried for many years to maintain a jam-packed schedule with zero margin for error, but life never seems to fit into perfectly scheduled boxes. After a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back moment, I’m learning to live off of the brink of disaster.
Read more ➞I've spent more time than necessary on our fund administration and reporting, in part because of some of the easily avoidable administrative mistakes I’ve made over my 10-year journey as a startup investor.
Read more ➞Over these past two months and throughout all of 2020, I've learned something that I want to record to make sure that I remember: My anxiety about the potential outcomes is almost always worse than the actual outcome.
Read more ➞