A recruiter suggested I talk with a venture firm. I started by explaining why nine out of ten firms would probably turn their nose up at me.
Their website said they were operators first. I liked that. The group looked smart and accomplished, and I was happy to learn what they wanted.
I was also not going to oversell my paper credentials.
I did not have a finished degree, an MIT undergraduate education, or an MBA from Wharton. I went to the University of Colorado Boulder to run cross country. I got injured, needed money for tuition, paused school to work, and never went back after the work took off.
The result was an alternate package. By thirty-five I had spent most of my adult life inside startups. I understood subscription businesses, had worked closely with founders, advised other technology companies, written my own angel checks, and spent years in board meetings. I had also been an executive at a public company.
I had joined Beatport when it was still a young Denver company. The work went from systems administration into technology leadership very quickly. There was no clean school-to-banking-to-MBA path in the middle.
I told the recruiter that I got where I was by doing the work and being great at it. Progressive firms might understand that talented operators arrived in different packages. Most firms, I suspected, would see the missing pedigree first.
That did not make the conversation pointless. I was happy to talk if the firm could see a useful role for somebody with my kind of experience. I could help with startups, products, technical organizations, subscription models, and founders.
Networking for the day I might raise capital myself seemed like the more likely path anyway.
I sent the note and left the door open.