Early on I saw the potential for capital to be made and lost through the eyes of immigrants that couldn’t afford to lose. As my parents squabbled over whether to sell their apartment to fund a desperate hotel booking website during the dot com bust, I recall my mother’s impassioned appeal: “you need to speak to the concierge, no one will book hotels online”.

Venture is a long-term game. It’s patient capital, doing the right thing repeatedly in the face of uncertainty. The move into venture capital was a natural one for me but venture is unlike any other business. You’re only as good as what you learned yesterday and you’ll only continue to be effective if you learn something tomorrow.

I started out at a large law firm and went on to grow my own startup focussed practice (probably before I should have). This taught me a lot about people, business and the law.

Building a startup is hard. Supporting the people is supporting the business and earning a founder’s trust is the hardest part of the job. I often wish I could just say: ‘trust me’, but you can’t. You have to earn trust slowly, over time. 

I’m not comfortable without ambiguity and problems to solve. I think it helps for founders to see that their investors aren’t alarmed by the sirens and if you’ve seen it before, you usually aren’t. 

I am a staunch realist, and I try to stay aware of the pernicious effect of conformity. It’s sometimes confronting to be a voice of dissent but I was taught that “when two people agree, nobody learns anything”. 

I see it as my role to identify long term, deep value opportunities. Once identified, my role is to then provide the ongoing support necessary for both the company and the individuals to succeed. It’s not about finding a diamond and moving on. It’s about doing it right, bottom up without shortcuts, consistently, and if you do that, you come out on top. 

There’s a sense of humility at EVP. We all try to be the one to bring the coffees. We work hard to support our founders and our investors and it’s not just sentimental. Any of us would literally make sales calls for our founders if that would deliver the best ROI. 

I’m always looking to find opportunities in places that other people might not look. I place little emphasis on where a founder grew up or was educated. I focus on whether a founder truly understands a problem and has what it takes to solve it. 

Venture in Australia today reminds me of the gold rush. It’s the land of opportunity down here. My guess is that many people will go broke looking for gold and get rich selling shovels. The opportunities presented by the crude ecosystem and the opportunities that will come through its maturation are exciting.

Above all I want to help founders and investors to obtain the outcomes they seek and have fun doing what I do. That’s about all I can ask for.