Athlete CEO #038: Venture Capital and the 99.9% | Joe Schmidt
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Episode Notes
Each week on Athlete CEO we feature select excerpts from interviews with trailblazers, the elite, those at the top of their field and the best at their craft with the goal to curate the best practices that you can leverage to unlock your human capital.
In this week’s episode we have the second installment with Joe Schmidt, we discuss what former pro athletes and other investors looking to get into the venture capital space need to know before they make costly mistakes.
Joe is a former Notre Dame football captain, investor at venture firm Accel, and he is now the VP of Business Development at Ethos Life.
Follow Joe on Twitter: @joeschmidtiv
1:51
Brandon Averill on AWM Capital and how their approach to investment mirrors that of Accel Ventures, which is focused on long time outcomes. The deal flow that pro athletes might see has already been picked over by professional investors.
3:07
Erik Averill on one of the most important mistakes pro athletes and others make when it comes to venture capital investments, which is understanding the terms and the implication of those terms. Getting access to certain funds or opportunities is great, but the terms of those deals is extremely important in the investment outcome.
4:05
Venture capital investments do not make sense for 99.9% of people.
4:46
Joe Schmidt on getting a deal across the finish line: Accel will look at 10,000 or so companies and only invest in around 10 over the course of the year.
Joe Schmidt: “It’s like the old Ted Williams quote, the master of waiting for his pitch, that’s kind of how you’ve got to be as an investor, you’ve just got to wait for the right pitch to cross the plate.”
6:20
Why Venture Capital Investment is not for 99.9% of pro athletes and/or other investors.
Joe Schmidt: “I listened to a very, very well known player in the NFL stand in front of an entire group once and give the advice that you need to know your financial advisor’s name. The amount of insanity that’s happening around athletes…”
8:41
It’s very difficult to do investment the right way. It’s important for everyone to realize that even if you’ve made money playing pro sports or as a founder or CEO, you might know your industry well, but find people you trust to help navigate important decisions that take a lot of careful consideration.
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