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Context: Bill Gurley is a General Partner at Benchmark, one of the best venture capital firms in the world. In September of 2018, Bill returned back to the University of Texas McCombs School of Business to present a powerful speech around how people should think about their career journey.
This is my transcript and notes from Bill Gurley's speech. Everything is from the perspective of Bill Gurley.
Believe it or not, I've been thinking about giving this particular presentation for about a decade. I was inspired after studying the stories of three people that you might call luminaries...I noticed an overlap pattern amongst them.
It means chasing a career where you just have immense passion.
Most people only take one career path, but if you've got one shot — why not do what makes you happy?
I'm speaking to a room full of MBA students because you all have an amazingly unique opportunity ahead of you.
You've work a little bit, and now yo uhave a chance to go do whatever you want.
One of Robert's neighbors was Fred Taylor, the basketball coach for Ohio State, so he was able to get a spot on a really good basketball team.
From my point of view, it isn't what happened inside the four walls of the gym where they practiced every day. Instead, it's what he did outside.
In the first five years of his coaching career he befriended five of the top basketball minds on the East Coast:
I'm using the name Robert to obscure things a little bit. I'm talking about Bobby Knight...
Five years later, at 36, they went undefeated, both in the regular season and post season, and won the national championship. That's never been repeated since...in over four decades.
He got a guitar when he was 10 years old, and by high school he was playing in a band regularly — they used to cover Elvis and Little Richard.
He went to the University of Minnesota, but he didn't go to class. Instead, he was hanging out in a place called Dinky Town.
Robert did an incredibly ambitious action to pursue his dream job...he hitch-hiked from Minneapolis to New York City. He had a guitar, a suitcase and $10...and it's a 1,200 mile trip.
If you ask him today why he did it, he would say that he was chasing the performers (Dave Van Ronk, Peggy Seeger, the New Lost City Ramblers). He was listening to them in Minnesota, but these performers were in New York City, and he wanted to see them.
Then Robert started hanging out at three specific venues: Cafe Wha, The Gaslight Cafe, and Gerde's Folk City.
He finally got his big break when was asked to open for John Lee Hooker at Gerde's one day. That's when his career got started.