Raising Venture Capital, and the Value of Academic Research with Winter Mead

In today’s episode, Tommy talks with Winter Mead, CEO and Co-Founder at Oper8r.

In addition to running Oper8r, Winter teaches entrepreneurship and venture capital at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Previously, Winter worked with tech startups and a multifamily office that managed $30 billion in investments.

Winter talks with Tommy about the real value of academic research and the path of investors, emerging managers and limited partners.

Key Takeaways

[05:10] - Research is all about helping other people and moving the needle — not about stroking your ego. [06:49] - Becoming an emerging manager and an institutional VC is sought after by most but it's a difficult process. You should learn from existing programs that focus on firm-building and that have a supportive network. [16:08] - Limited partners play an interesting role in terms of where capital gets allocated, and, in general, how the industry moves forward. [21:32] - It’s easy to position yourself as an expert if you are thorough when learning. Learn about the tiniest details, how every operation works.

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