A few months back, I was approached by Light Street Capital, a Palo Alto based financial firm, about being the keynote speaker at their annual company retreat…
Wanting to know exactly who my audience would be, I researched the firm and what I found was IMPRESSIVE.
There was an article from Forbes and a CNBC interview with Light Street Capital founder and CEO, Glen Kacher, that popped up, and it didn’t take long to figure out how and why they have been so successful.
Glen, who is from Virginia, went to Stanford business school, and after recognizing the potential in the Silicon Valley, he never returned to the east coast.
Glen immersed himself in the technology world by educating himself in the technological game and spending much of his time hanging around VC’s and hard charging entrepreneurs.
The result of time well spent developed into an uncanny ability to forecast not only which companies will be successful, but which ones will be crushed because of a shift in industry landscape.
Incredibly humbled by the speaking request, my initial thought was what sort of message of VALUE could I deliver to Glen and his team that would resonate with a group of people that most likely were not baseball fans nor people doing Ironman’s or running 100 mile races…
Then, after doing my research and having a cool opportunity to speak with Glen, it was almost as if a big ass hand slapped me across the face and a voice from above reigned down.
🗣“DUDE, wake the f*ck up!!! The Light Street Capital team may not be hitting 95-mph fastballs or partaking in a triathlon across the country, but this squad is GRINDING day in and day out. Just as the exuberance for Opening Day and the dog days of August are very real in a baseball season, so are the highs and lows in the yearly cycle of every other industry. We all will hit hot streaks and we all will slump at some point, but the message we want to deliver here is that in order to reach and maintain maximum productivity, just like our new pal Glen did, we must entrench ourselves in the process of DOING THE WORK.
When we reach mile 80 of the 100-mile race, it’s no longer about how fast you are going; it’s just a matter of making sure we are continuing to MOVE FORWARD by putting one foot in front of the other. Our ability to ENDURE and become comfortable with the uncomfortable is what will ultimately allow use to grow as baseball players, endurance athletes, hedge fund managers and human beings.
Often times, we alienate ourselves into subcultures based on common interests and particular industries. We get scared to step out of our comfort zone and fail to see or comprehend what others in different life arenas experience… The funny thing is that no matter what job we have or what our passion is, the EXACT SAME SHIT applies to each and every one of us. We will all experience ebbs and flows, yet the very best individuals in any industry are consistently OBSESSED with their work and NEVER take their feelings too personally… Oh yea, and the very best teams don’t give two f*cks who gets the credit…
Bottom line is the same bottom line we have been preaching to the GO HARDS since the F*IT List – Life Lessons From A Human Crash Test Dummy came out… WE GET OUT WHAT WE PUT IN.”
Grateful to Glen & the Light Street Capital team for the AWESOME opportunity to speak and helping me realize we are all just one big happy family looking to KICK ASS AND CHARGE FORWARD. 👊
-EB