Five to ten times a year, a big storm rolls through the Central Mountains of Colorado. Vail gets crushed with snow and becomes the best place to ski in North America. Being there is one thing but knowing what to do and where to go is another. What matters is your strategy and I’m here to give you two of those for a big powder day.
Read MoreEvery time we dropped a load at the high camp, we’d take the opportunity to go climbing on the peaks to either side of the K2 glacier, a collection of 7,000 meter bumps on the map with no name and no ascent history.
Read MoreMountain Guides and their Clients are never Tourists. When you travel together to a new place to climb or ski, your job as a Guide is to ensure your Client has the trip of a lifetime. If you’re a Client, you’re there to have fun, focus on the objective, learn some new skills, do your best, and be a good partner.
Read MoreIn venture capital and in alpine climbing, knowing when to charge and when to stay put is challenging. To help manage the psychology of risk as climbers and investors, we establish markers and margins.
Read MoreMountain Guides are best in their own terrain. Experienced Guides can and do take their clients around the world to climb and ski but landing up high in unfamiliar surroundings and expecting to guide clients safely up or down is a tall order, even for IFMGA Guides.
Read MoreThe most important decision that Mountain Guides and Venture Capitalists make in their professional careers is with whom to partner. Choosing the right partner in guiding and in business is the key ingredient in a great fund or a great guiding company.
Read MoreGovernance is key to the role venture capitalists play, and most serve on the boards of the companies they invest in. Boards are important to a startup’s success and the best VCs aid in this corporate development effort through credibility, strategy, connections and good judgment. Experienced entrepreneurs value these contributions alongside help with finance and rely on their VC Board members to guide them through important decisions.
Read MoreFaulkner’s novel about the decline and dissolution of a once-great Southern family was an epiphany to Rich and me growing up in Atlanta. All the bad choices and bad luck piled up on the Compsons through the generations until their shared, brutal end. As teenagers, Rich and I were surrounded by the same gentry, the same mind-set, the same culture as Faulkner described so vividly fifty years before us. We recognized it for what it was, and we determined not to endure it.
Read MoreWhen we’re not climbing and skiing with our clients, Mountain Guides like to eat and drink. Food and Wine is a critical part of the guest experience and our most memorable tours include eating and drinking at familiar places we love to share with our clients.
Read MoreThere are only a few thousand IFGMA Guides in the world, spread across 27 member countries. It’s a small community bonded to the mountains and to each other through their shared passion and proficiency. As a guide and as a client, I’ve skied and climbed with many of the best Mountain Guides around the world.
Read MoreAt Boulder Ventures, we love the Grateful Dead and listen to them all the time. Jerry Garcia was a great entrepreneur who understood the economics of the music business in the digital age long before anyone else.
Read MoreMountain Guides are larger-than-life characters. Among the skills Guides acquire over a lifetime in their terrain is to project confidence and competence to clients, and then to demonstrate both in the daily conduct of their jobs. Venture Capitalists are called on to do the same thing by their investors and entrepreneurs.
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