I'm delighted that Roger McNamee will be joining the discussion at the Innovatoin Summit on "Investing in Change" on Friday evening.
In my old life as a technology reporter, I knew Roger as one of the smartest, funniest and (importantly for journalists) most accessible investors around, and one of the few who plays guitar in a rock-and-roll band that unabashedly emulates the Grateful Dead. You may have seen him in the news recently when Elevation Partners (his new private equity fund that includes U2 singer Bono as a partner) made a minority investment in Forbes.
But what really prompted us to invite him to join the panel was a speech he gave last year at a tech conference called Software 2005. In the speech, he talks about technology and globalization as the context for "The New Normal," the title of his 2004 book. But what set the talk apart was his discussion of what it takes to succeed on a personal level. After all, the role of an investor is to make bets on people.
"Most of us are faced with a huge pile of things to do and decisions to make," Roger says. "More often than not, we start at the top of the pile and try to work our way through. Wrong answer. The pile never gets smaller. Here's a key insight: Most of the stuff in our inbox is just not that important. The challenge is to figure out which two or three things really matter...and focus your energy on them."
Roger makes a distinction between a job and a career. "Your job generates a W-2. Your career defines who you are," he says, urging all manner of career development, including networking and career development. "Career activities are an investment in you," he says.
The key, he says, is a long time horizon -- 10 years or more . "I am convinced that the person with the longest time horizon generally wins. Bill Gates. Warren Buffett. Bono. Steve Jobs -- I'm thinking about the current Steve Jobs Era, the one that produced Pixar and the new Apple. Each had a time horizon far longer than his competitors."
It's an interesting notion for entrepreneurs in the second half of life, and maybe worth a question on Friday evening.
--David Bank
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