- At firms like CapitalG and CRV, an increasing amount of VCs are former college athletes.
- Some firms like Benchmark have specifically sought out college athletes in recent hires.
- Athlete VCs say that the skills and lessons they learned on sports teams make them better investors.
Maggie Basta‘s first experience as a teammate came early in life: She grew up playing soccer and was on the soccer team at Harvard University. Today, Basta is an investor at Scale Venture Partners and focuses on AI infrastructure and developer tools. Basta is part of a growing number of venture capitalists around the country who are former college athletes and bringing the lessons they learned from years of playing sports to enhance their investing careers.
One of Business Insider’s rising stars of venture capital in 2024, Basta said that her experience playing soccer taught her the importance of accountability.
“Your portfolio companies are counting on you, and your investing team is counting on you, so showing up and doing what you say you’re going to do as an investor is incredibly important,” she told BI. “If you don’t show up for your team, you’re letting everyone else down and holding everyone else back.”
Some VCs are openly seeking out college athletes as employees. In a recent job posting for an associate position at Slow Ventures, the firm called out athletes as great potential candidates.
“The easiest people for us to hire: You got a 1600 on your SATs, and played sports seriously (++ for endurance athletes),” the posting said.
Investor Peter Fenton, whose work at Benchmark has led to notable exits including Twitter and Yelp, is a runner and previously looked to hire student-athletes for assistant positions at the firm, Business Insider previously reported.
In 2022 he hired Vanessa Fraser, a standout Stanford University athlete who inked a deal to run professionally for Nike.
“Running has grounded me into a more disciplined routine, which translated to higher functioning and higher performance,” Fraser previously told BI. “The biggest surprise to me is that I’m almost less tired than when I was a full-time professional athlete. I’m more mentally stimulated.”
VC firms are seeking out college athletes with transferable skills that could make them great investors.
For investors like James Green, a background in sports has been a value-add for his VC firm, CRV. Growing up in a small town in the United Kingdom, he was one of many young people tapped by the British government as part of an elite-sports development initiative. He spent 15 years as a rower, culminating with a spot on Harvard University’s rowing team.
Green, who focuses on investing in cybersecurity and fintech startups, told BI that VC and rowing are similar because they’re both team and individual sports.
“Without a team, you can’t win, but you’re only as good as your slowest person,” he said. “It’s kind of the same in VC — we’re all a team, individually making our own investments. When I make an investment, the team wins.”
Green added that sports have also taught him patience. Training for years towards an athletic goal has parallels to a long career investing in startups and dealing with high and low periods.
“I rowed at a high level for years, which takes a lot of patience,” he said. “You’re doing sets on the rowing machine and working out multiple times per day, sometimes just to get one second faster or even plateau. It’s the same when you’re in the early stage for startups. You have to prepare for it to be nonlinear.”
CapitalG vice president Kelly Barton also says that playing sports — in her past and present life — has made her a better investor. The former Massachusetts Institute of Technology rower, who joined CapitalG In 2021, transitioned to running marathons after graduating and later found success in the triathlon.
When she spoke to BI in mid-December, she was about to embark on a trip to Taupō, New Zealand, to compete in the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships.
“One thing that I’ve appreciated is that workouts create a forced space for me to think about the companies I back,” she said. “Stepping back for two-plus hours a day helps me find the space to think about their next steps.”
CapitalG general partner Jesse Welder — who himself was on the University of California-Berkeley’s sailing team — told BI that Barton and the other members of his team, who all happen to be former college athletes, have extra drive. There are mulitple former student athletes at CapitalG, including AI investing partner Jill Chase, who was captain of Williams College’s women’s basketball team, and managing partner Laela Sturdy, who was captain of the women’s basketball team at Harvard.
“Athletes are competitively driven people who are driven to succeed more than the average person,” he said. “In an investing job, there is so much that you can keep learning, and it never stops mentally. Endurance athletes, and athletes in general, are a good fit for this.”
Barton’s work at CapitalG has continued to complement her sport: she won her age group at December’s IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships and became a world champion for women ages 25-29.
“I’m my best athlete when I’m my best self, and that means that I’m well-rested, and I’m devoting time to my relationships and my work, too,” she said.
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