Investing in Impact
Wes Selke, Managing Director and Founder of Better Ventures, shares the story of a kid with a fondness for math and languages who goes on to blend a deep financial acumen with a strong sense of purpose to help pioneer and advance the category of social venture capital.
Episode Notes
Wes Selke, Managing Director and Founder of Better Ventures, shares the story of a kid with a fondness for math and languages who goes on to blend a deep financial acumen with a strong sense of purpose to help pioneer and advance the category of social venture capital. Wes shares powerful, relatable anecdotes including his “need” to learn Spanish, his experiences on church-based volunteer trips, and his soul-searching late nights in Chicago that would later prove to be defining steps in determining his career path.
Wes talks about the conflict between a sense of fulfilment from his mission trips and his early career success in finance. He shares how he thought through, and searched for, a more meaningful application of his finance skills, how he found opportunities through friends and through graduate school, and how he got started in social venture capital. Wes concludes by discussing what he’s learned as an investor in social ventures, an advisor to purpose-led business builders, and a social entrepreneur based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
How do you connect technical skills into a sense of purpose? How can you make a career that is both profitable and impactful? How do you find opportunities for your unique set of skills? What is the best way to position yourself to build something meaningful?
Guest Bio
Wes has 20 years of venture capital and investment experience with Better Ventures, Good Capital, William Blair, and Ernst & Young's Mergers & Acquisitions group. He earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BBA from the University of Michigan. Wes has volunteered with organizations around the globe, which has fueled his passion for applying his business skills to build a better world.
Wes enjoys rolling up his sleeves to help mission-driven entrepreneurs realize their vision for building high-growth world-changing companies. He lives in Oakland, CA with his wife and three young kids and enjoys road cycling in the East Bay hills and Sunday trips to the farmers market.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/wdselke/
Building Blocks
Write down one thing about your hopes, goals or dreams, that if people knew it, they could help you become a better builder. Maybe like Wes, there's a career pivot you want to make, or maybe you're in search of the perfect business partner or co-founder or colleague. Maybe there's a learning journey around that people around you could help out with. Undoubtedly, there's a ton of people in your network who could help. Wes talked about how doors will open if you follow your passions, but sometimes those doors have to be opened for you. And the more people who know about who you are and what you believe and what you want to do, the more doors will open.
Helpful Links
Paulo Coelho’s book, The Alchemist
Presentation on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological views on vocation
Kevin Jones, “Two Pocket Thinking”
Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus’s book, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
+ Episode Transcript
Wes Selke [00:00:05] I would come back Monday morning and plop down in my Herman Miller chair, open up, Excel and start running numbers or whatever deal I was working on. And I just started asking myself, what about what might do it with myself here? What do I what is this career path that I'm on? Because I almost got kind of addicted to that feeling that I had the prior week of of just ultimate sort of purpose and fulfillment, that I was doing something for the greater good. And that really kind of sowed in some seeds for me to start thinking about how can I do more of that on a more consistent basis and kind of weave it into my career.
Jesse Purewal [00:00:56] From Qualtrics Industries. This is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas fuels some of the world's most amazing products, brands and experiences. I'm Jesse Purewal. Today on the show, how a deep acumen in finance, a volunteer experience in Mexico and a tip from a business school classmate came together to enable Wes Selke to discover his professional purpose and breakthrough in the world of impact investing.
Jesse Purewal [00:01:38] I am here with w w it's great to be with you. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Great to be here.
Wes Selke [00:01:44] Thanks for the opportunity.
Jesse Purewal [00:01:45] So Wes, we've known each other a while and I know bits and pieces of your story, but it's like excerpts from a book, not the overall arc. So what I'm excited about in this conversation is to go a little deeper. And I think for anybody out there who maybe has started their career in a more traditional role, who has interest in exploring entrepreneurship and linking their work to a heightened sense of purpose, you have a ton of practical wisdom and guidance to offer, and I'm excited about that. So let's get into it. All right. Sounds good. So w take me all the way back to the start. Where you from? Where'd you grow up, where it all began.
Wes Selke [00:02:18] That hail from the great state of Michigan. I grew up in Rochester Hills, about forty five minutes north of Detroit. Dad Dad worked at General Motors for over 50 years and just retired a couple of years ago. But I grew up in Rochester, Rochester Hills Michigan and went on to go to school at Michigan.
Jesse Purewal [00:02:42] So at what point in in your early years do you notice that you're developing this aptitude for the quantitative side of your brain and thinking about things from an econ or finance standpoint?
Wes Selke [00:02:55] You know, I always like math. My mom was a teacher growing up. She was an English teacher, but really drilled in grammar with it, which is related to math and also was was always enjoyed. Other languages end up taking a lot of Spanish through the years. But yeah, I think when I got to college at University of Michigan, ended up applying to the BBA program, the sort of two year undergrad business program that's your junior and senior year. And all the prerequisites for that are a lot of quantitative classes, as boring as things like T accounts are for most people. I, I didn't mind learning about them and I would often tutor some of my fellow classmates and things like debits and credits and how that all works and discounted cash flow analysis. And so when I had an internship in Michigan after my junior year, I ended up working at Ford Motor Company and their finance division. And that kind of really solidified my sort of desire to go that route.
Jesse Purewal [00:04:03] It's so interesting to me that you put linguistics and language into the mathematical category. I think not a lot of people think about it that way, but in listening to the way that you sometimes present and communicate, there is this logical but also kind of emotive sense to it. So I love hearing hearing you say that and keep that on the same side of the ledger.
Wes Selke [00:04:23] Yeah, it's very structured. Grammar is very structured. Language is very structured. The way it's taught, the way it's the way it's learned is very sort of formulaic. I've always heard that people that excel in language typically are folks that that also do quite well in math.
Jesse Purewal [00:04:39] Well, let me dwell on the Spanish immersion in the Spanish learning for a little bit. Just talk about the nature of learning Spanish, learning a second language early on in your life and what kind of things that ultimately kind of led you to to be able to pursue.
Wes Selke [00:04:55] My my wife likes to joke that we all speak Spanish because I fell for a foreign exchange student when I was a senior in high school, which there is some truth to that. And I'd been taking Spanish for a number of years. And I did have a little bit of a crush on a foreign exchange student from Spain when I was a senior in high school. And I would say that that a couple of month period, my Spanish really, really took off, really grew quite, quite rapidly out of necessity. But in all seriousness, you know, learning a foreign language opens your mind to just new cultures and the ability to travel. I mean, it's so fun and so rewarding to be able to go to places like Spain, Mexico, parts of Central and South America, which I've kind of been all over, and just speak the language and to have people kind of perk up when they hear you start speaking their language, it takes you to a whole nother level of connectivity with with the culture and appreciation for the culture. I will say also by my parents, they started planning for a European trip for 10 years. My mom was like in the summer of 1994, we're going to Europe. And I was like, whatever that's like so far out there. But they saved money every year to go on this big trip to Europe. And boy, I mean, that was just such a an eye opening experience for me as a 17 year old to get to go to Barcelona and Paris and Amsterdam and Rome and Nice, all these just amazing places. And that combined with my ability to. At point in time, I'll hold my own with the Spanish language really opened my eyes to all these exciting opportunities to travel and to learn other cultures.
Jesse Purewal [00:06:47] And so you start your career over in Chicago. You're with Ernst and Young and William Blair in those early days. But it's the story that you've told me about a trip that you made, again, internationally that really set you on a memorable and interesting course. Can you tell me that story?
Wes Selke [00:07:05] When I got out of school, I moved to Chicago to start my first job at Ernst and Young. After a year or two, one of my really good friends from college said, I'll be going to this church. It's really cool. I think you would really like it. And by the way, they do these volunteer trips down to the Baja Peninsula, Mexico, and I think you should come check it out. So I did. I went and checked it out. And I think one of the first things I did, I went to an info session that they were holding kind of after services about this trip to Mexico. And it really intrigued me. And I thought it'd be a cool experience to check it out. So I went on one of these trips in 2002, and it was just a formative experience for me. We spent a week at an orphanage in a very small town called San Vicente Guerrero. There's a lot of migrant farming going on there. Farmers from all over Mexico come to the northern part of the Baja Peninsula to work the fields. And there's just a lot of economic hardship there. We spent a week there sleeping in bunk beds, getting to know the kids, just beautiful children and, you know, working with them every day and doing projects. And then really eye opening was the work that we did on a couple of different evenings where we went out into these migrant farming camps and served meals, brought the food that we had brought from from Costco and made a hot meal for these folks and then talk to them and got to know that you prayed for some of them. And also this, I think for the one of the first times in my life kind of experience this deep fulfillment. Yeah, this was kind of late 2002. I've been working at Ernst Young for a couple of years. I think at that point, about three years. And I would come back Monday morning and plop down in my Herman Miller chair, open up, Excel, and start running numbers for whatever deal I was working on. And I just started asking myself, what about what am I doing with myself here? What do I what is this career path that I'm on? Because I almost got kind of addicted to that feeling that I had the prior week of of just ultimate sort of purpose and fulfillment, that I was doing something for the greater good. And that really kind of sowed in some seeds for me to start thinking about how can I do more of that on a more consistent basis and kind of weave it into my career.
Jesse Purewal [00:09:28] But this wasn't a case of you wanting to abdicate everything you had learned and done and known and become really, really good at and giving it up for something different. This was a case, I think eventually of you saying to yourself, well, wait a minute, I can combine some of the things that I'm really excellent at and lean much harder into a sense of purpose by kind of going on a new vector kind of within the domain that I already know. So how did you think about that?
Wes Selke [00:09:55] That was a major dilemma. Initially, I knew that I had that restlessness to want to do something else. And but I just couldn't pass up this this sense of purpose and this restlessness for wanting to do more. And to be honest, I was scared to death about waking up and being forty, how I am now my age now essentially waking up, having a wife and kids and a mortgage and being depressed and being like having boxed myself in into a certain career path that you couldn't get out of. I honestly was scared to death of of that, but I didn't know what that meant. I don't know if there is a way to do this through through business and through finance. I flirted with the idea of going to Peace Corps. I thought about foreign service going down to D.C., about teaching English abroad, going to work for a nonprofit. There are a lot of these things. But but I kind of just kept coming back to like like I like I like business. I like finance. I'm good at it. I just I'm not sensing and feeling that that kind of purpose and fulfillment through my current career path. What happened was someone kind of introduced me to this idea of microfinance that Muhammad Yunus, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize just a couple of years later for his work at the Grameen Bank and microfinance. And and I looked it up online. I was like, oh, my gosh, this this is it. Yeah. This is an opportunity to combine my desire for impact and doing something to make a positive impact on the world. And it really enabled me to kind of leverage my my skill sets of business and finance,.
Jesse Purewal [00:11:42] And it sounds like you also were able to identify concrete actions and be with people to stay in dialog around what you could do next. So what was the sequence of things that you that you then did?
Wes Selke [00:11:59] So I read The Alchemist and right around this time and I love that book. And the central theme of that book is listen to the purpose in your heart, listen to it and follow it. And if you tap into that and follow it, the universe conspires to help you achieve that. This guy from church introduced me to his friend at at Greenbank. We had to call it really kind of opened my eyes to to that world. So ultimately, I decided I'm going to apply to business school and decided that business school would be a great sort of pivot point. And again, there is plenty of momentum just to stay. Two amazing MBA programs right in my backyard. But there is just this calling I fell to to go to Haas, to go to Berkeley. It was kind of on the fence there. I get this letter in the mail from from Berkeley saying that we're offering you this very significant scholarship. And again, I felt like it was God, the universe, saying, stop thinking about this other stuff. Like you need to come out here. Like, I'm going to make it abundantly clear to you, if it wasn't already clear to you that you need to get your ass out to northern California,
Jesse Purewal [00:13:12] Love that seeking the signal. So then Wes, you do follow that signal, you get to Berkeley. Obviously, that's where we met. And more or less right away at the Haas school, you're getting involved in organizations and activities related to triple bottom line investing and social impact and all of these kinds of areas that you told yourself you would. So talk about your experiences in this context and kind of what what you were up to and again, what actions you started taking.
Wes Selke [00:13:41] When I arrived at at Haas, I was very focused. It was helpful to to come to to Berkeley, having a really good sense for what I wanted to do, but also knowing what I didn't want to do. And I think that's part of learning about yourself and your your career trajectory and why every experience is so important to to learn to figure out what you want to do. Part of that journey is figuring out what you don't want to do. And sometimes it's easier to cross things off the list than to know what you really want to do. But over time, that kind of leads you in the right direction. And what's also cool about that is as you get to know people and they know what you're all about and kind of what you're looking for, they they are also on the lookout for you. So I remember any time something would come up, it related to microfinance or impact. And one of my classmates heard about it. They would be like, hey Wes, I heard about this, you know, this is something that might be interesting to you. And that's kind of what happened in terms of my internship is one of my really good friends. Ellie Kelly had come across a listing for the Good Capital internship opening and set it my way because she knew that I was interested in those kinds of things.
Jesse Purewal [00:14:52] So I think it should tell that story because it really underscores that that sense of purpose, because it came a little late in the game as it relates to internships and maybe you were going to go left and then you ended up going right.
Wes Selke [00:15:06] Yeah, towards the end of second semester, maybe by kind of April time frame, I had kind of cobbled together an internship where I was going to be working part time for two different organizations that together would have been kind of a full time internship. And it was good, maybe not great, but I was kind of ready to do it. And and then like a day later, Ellie sent me this link to this internship job opening for a summer associate working for a brand new impact investing venture firm in San Francisco that was looking for someone with a finance background to help them deal source and kind of get off the ground. And I read about it and I was like, oh, wow. This is this is this is actually what I want to do. And I was really torn about what to do. I went and met with Tim and Kevin, the two founders of Good Capital. We kind of hit it off. I was sort of exactly what they were looking for. They made an offer and then I had this dilemma. What do I do? I felt obligated to follow through on my verbal commitment to the other internship. But I also knew that if I turn this good tap thing down, I was going to probably regret it. So I mustered up the courage. I called up the two owners of the two other firms that I was going to work for and just basically told them really sorry. But I got this other offer. I want to be upfront with you that I really want to take it. And it worked out fine. I'm still friends with those two other organizations and it was the right decision. And I'm really glad I went with it.
Jesse Purewal [00:16:39] So then you do the internship at Good Capital, you decide you then after school want to go back there full time, and pretty soon you're getting involved in a lot of different aspects of the business and even of the social entrepreneurship and socially responsible investment community within the Bay Area. And more broadly, what were those early years of the maybe second phase of your career like? And how much time were you putting to kind of learning the art and the discipline of investing in this new way? How much maybe were you inventing it and being a category creator or sort of a methodological inventor in these these early, early days and early years?
Wes Selke [00:17:22] Good Capital was definitely a pioneering venture firm. It was one of the first firms specifically focused on social impact. The thesis of Good Capital was filling the gap for risk taking capital for social enterprises that couldn't otherwise get access to that capital. And this whole idea that you can you can back for profit organizations that have impact fully baked into their business models. Again, this is kind of a new way of thinking. Back then, it was more black and white, sort of what what Kevin Jones like to call sort of "two pocket thinking", which pocket is this dollar coming out of it, coming out of? Is it that the maximizing return pocket and therefore I'm going to invest in technology companies or the stock market or is it coming out of my philanthropic pocket and they're all sort of white paper that they put together when they were launching Good Capital was talking about this third pocket where you're kind of doing both you're you're looking to generate returns and you're also looking to create sustainable, scalable impact because you're tying it to a for profit, scalable business model. It was a great opportunity for me to really learn to learn, learn the venture business, learn how to diligence companies, learn how to find companies, learn how to put together a series, a term sheet, and then ultimately engage with those companies sitting on their boards. And I ended up sitting on three different boards while I was at Good Capital.
Jesse Purewal [00:18:52] So what was the dominant emotion that you had? Like your you done the reading about Grameen. You kind of intellectually and emotionally, maybe spiritually, even knew this was the place you wanted to start to take your energy and take your time. But now that you're actually in it, what did it feel like? What was going on in your heart and in your mind in these in these early times?
Wes Selke [00:19:14] I loved it. It was kind of like a dream come true. I had set out years earlier to find a career path that was going to weave in that the impact and the purpose, the sense of purpose in my day job, I really enjoyed very much enjoyed the people aspect of it, which I still do to this day, and I think is one of my favorite aspects of the venture model is it's a people business. You're getting to know people on both sides, you know, getting to know LPs that invest in your fund and building a relationship with them and getting to know entrepreneurs and founders and building relationships with them and being part of helping them achieve their dreams and being a puzzle piece to help them solve that.
Jesse Purewal [00:19:57] And so after a you're at Good Capital a while, there are some new opportunities that start to emerge that still allow you to keep one foot where you are, but put one foot in a new place as you start to have the what became The Hub opportunity. So talk about that and maybe talk about it in the context of the natural way that one spends one's time as a leader in these kind of burgeoning fields where it wasn't in any way unusual that you were kind of doing a lot of different leadership roles within a couple of different organizations.
Wes Selke [00:20:32] What became really exciting was that Good Cap became sort of the center of the Bay Area universe for for building out the community around impact investing. And Tim Freundlich and Kevin Jones, the two founders of Good Capital, they're visionaries and they've been visionaries throughout their careers, and they both saw an opportunity. They launched the fund. And then a couple of years later, Tim spearheaded the efforts in the Bay Area to launch a couple of different coworking spaces, which were known as The Impact Hub to kind of really be the day to day infrastructure and groundwork for this economy in this ecosystem where people can go and work and collaborate. And this was pre we work and kind of in the early days of coworking spaces coming online in the Bay Area. But what it always had that these other spaces didn't have was that sense of community and culture and like mindedness. And you knew. That when you walked in the doors, that all the other founders and entrepreneurs and freelancers and other workers in this space share a similar ethos to you, there are thinking about impact, of thinking about purpose, and that creates a sense of community and really interesting synergistic opportunities for people to work together.
Jesse Purewal [00:21:55] So it's out of The Hub, if I remember right, that the original seed that eventually became the place you are now, Better Ventures was first planted. So talk a little bit about what led to that. And again, maybe in the spirit of this being a people business, as you said, sometimes there are some friction filled situations that you still have to manage around things like dynamics and ego and different objectives that people have. So maybe talk a little bit about the the challenging elements of that, but also the opportunity that that opened up for you.
Wes Selke [00:22:28] It was it was just sort of this natural progression, which really has been my career since Haas kind of one step, one foot in front of the other and kind of building it brick by brick by brick and responding to the market and the opportunities that are out there. And so while we were responding with SOCAP and The Impact Hub to what we saw to be the opportunities of the market, once we opened The Impact Hub in a short few months, it filled up with entrepreneurs, mission driven entrepreneurs that needed help. They needed capital, they needed advice, they needed support and kind of navigating those early stages of the business. And, you know, word got out that I was the venture capitalist. And so people started lining up at my desk wanting to talk to tell me about their latest business idea and ask me if I could invest in it and could I advise them. And I enjoy those conversations. But Good Capital was really not set up to back really early stage companies. We were kind of the earliest we would go would be post revenue, a couple of million in revenue Series A investment. We'd already kind of put all of our capital to work, and so we saw a big opportunity there. There was a big market need around this time. There were tech accelerators coming online, TechStars, Y Combinator, five hundred startups, etc. And we looked at those models and said, you know what? I think we could build a mission driven, impact oriented accelerator program, launch it here at the hub and provide for the needs of these early stage companies, both with the capital and the advice. And that's exactly what we did. I met Rick Moss, my now business partner at Better Ventures. He and I and a few other folks that were working at The Hub started laying the plans for an accelerator program that we would launch in early 2011. We called it Hub Ventures. And again, it was kind of designed off of TechStars. This idea that you kind of taken a batch of companies, seven to 10 companies, invest 20 thousand dollars in each of them, and kind of help them get off the ground. And so that's what we did. And and then we kind of we had a sense that we really we really had something we did one accelerator program in each of the first three years and over the course of those three years, raised about five hundred thousand dollars, really small amount to make these twenty twenty five thousand dollar investments in these companies. You work with those companies through that accelerator model. Yeah. We just answer your question, though, about sort of some of the friction that we felt. And I think it kind of gets to this idea of, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you need to be ready to will your business into existence. And that's what we look for in our entrepreneurs. We look for, OK, you're smart, you have a Ph.D., but can you get it done? Can you can you bust down walls? Because you know that sometimes you're going to have to do that. And there were some walls that Rick and I had to bust down to kind of birth Hub Ventures, which became that the predecessor really and what evolved into better ventures. There was some friction there from the leadership at the time at at The Hub outside of Tim and Kevin, but some folks that we had hired there to run it, which had had other ideas for what how venture should be, it was tough. There were a couple of meetings. There were afterwards I looked at Rick and said, you know, I'm not I'm not so sure this is going to work. I really want to do this, but I'm not sure we can make it work. But we just kept at it. And then finally, I saw an opportunity to go back to Tim and say, hey, look, we've got a lot of friction here. We we think that the best course of action would be to spin Hub Ventures out of the hub. There was essentially a program within the impact of letting myself and Rick run it. And so we cut a deal. They got a small stake in the work that we were doing. We were kind of unshackled. From the organization and had our own trajectory, and now we are off on our own and required to raise all of our own capital, but that's exactly what we needed.
Jesse Purewal [00:26:47] So you used the analogy of one step at a time, but to me, it feels like there's an altitude element to it, too, here that you started with the baseline of this kind of solid expertise in core finance and investing principles. You then build on that with the mission-driven piece. You build on that again with the skill in the venture angle and now yet again, you're becoming the builder of your own organization. So did you ever kind of stop and look back down the lower parts of the mountain and go, boy, this has really been quite a journey? Or did it all just feel so organic in in each moment that it was like now like like this is the journey and I'm on it and and I don't look back.
Wes Selke [00:27:34] Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think that it's kind of like watching your kid grow up, you know, they kind of grew up right before your eyes and you don't really notice how much they've grown. But, yeah, when I look back on the 10 or so years that that we've been on this journey, it has been kind of one step after another, just kind of keep going, build it brick by brick. It's happened organically. None of it happened. Like, all of a sudden it it's not like a ten million dollar commitment just dropped out of the sky. All of a sudden for our second fund, it was, OK, we got to build this thing one investor at a time and take all these calls and take all these meetings and just keep keep building it.
Jesse Purewal [00:28:16] So when you mentioned this idea of someone that you're investing in having a willingness to run through a wall and just get it done. Talk in a mission driven context and an entrepreneurial context about what it is you are seeking and what it is you have seen the most successful entrepreneurs, the most successful builders bring to the table to warrant your focus and your time and your investment.
Wes Selke [00:28:43] That's a great question. Our thesis at Better Ventures, is that mission driven organizations can outperform the market. What I will say is that, number one founders that are on a mission to solve these big problems are intrinsically motivated to succeed. And I think there is more of a chance of success when you are intrinsically motivated to succeed. And secondly, you've got this halo effect where you can attract talent, you can attract resources, capital and human resources to your team. And on that first point about founders being sort of intrinsically motivated, we are. We often ask questions when we're interviewing these founders. What motivates you? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Why are you doing this? This is the odds are always stacked against you as a founder. So why would you go down this route? And we're looking for answers where they talk about their deep desire to solve this problem and they often have personal stories about it. Maybe it's someone who grew up very low income and had a hard time accessing financial aid to go to go to college. Maybe it's someone who's one of their parents had was afflicted with with the disease and therefore they're working on a drug discovery platform to solve cancer. We're looking for deep connections to the problems that they're looking to solve. And we think that out of that sort of well of passion for the problem comes this ability to to bust down those walls and succeed. I mean, at the end of the day, we're looking for mission driven founders that are leveraging innovations in science and technology to to solve big problems in the world. And and we think a lot about the UN Sustainable Development Goals. There's 17 goals that were published in 2015, which the UN has stated. If we can achieve these goals, we can achieve a much more equitable, just and sustainable society. And that's how we that's our framework that we look through when we're assessing the impact of any company that we're considering an investment in. And then impact could be local to the US. It could be global to places like Africa in other parts of the developing world. Most of our investments do tend to be more local and probably even two thirds in the Bay Area. And there are plenty of big problems to solve here domestically. But even a lot of the companies that we're backing are still focused on on global problems, around clean energy adoption, universal access to education, economic opportunity, those kinds of things.
Jesse Purewal [00:31:17] Fascinating. Such an opportunity to be constantly in learning mode in this role. It's very, very cool. You used the phrase earlier, a dream come true. It's a dream you're still living, which is great, I want to ask you what you think is the alchemy of success for you, talking about things like patients or finding the right people or discovering the courage within yourself or maybe even a little bit of luck. What what do you think is behind what do you think fuels the ability for you to have taken these successive steps to get to where you are?
Wes Selke [00:31:54] I think having faith in the process and they're still despite the where where we've been able to grow this in the last 10 years, there's still days where I doubt because venture you don't really know how good you are at Venture for quite a while. It's not like stock market investing where you kind of know day to day, where you're at with venture. You're marking up your companies when they raise future financing rounds, but you don't really know how good you are or how good a fund is going to be for at least about 10 years from launching that fund. So there are still times when I doubt even I look around and we're this beautiful office in uptown Oakland. We've got four people. We got fifty six hundred fifty six million under management. And it is a total dream come true and not what I had ever really expected to happen, you know, but I think looking back, I was just having faith in the process, having the the willpower we just had to will this into existence, we had to will this spinout of Hub Ventures we had to will Fund Two into existence 20 million dollars from 60 investors to about two two and a half years to raise plenty of times. And we could have just thrown in the towel because it was a ton of work. Talk about shoe leather costs. There's a lot of shoe leather cost just running around, flying around the country, many trips over to San Francisco, many rejections from LPs. And I think it's like having that confidence that I think both Rick and I were so dedicated to making this happen. We deeply want to do it. We think the world needs the kind of companies that we're backing. And I think that that that comes across and a lot of our our meetings with LPs and with entrepreneurs and we kind of have those network effects and build the brand and have built a good reputation. And so I think um, ya know following through on that reputation, being good, honest folks with good morals and good values and kind of letting that come out through how we conduct ourselves in our work has really paid some dividends and got us to where we are today.
Jesse Purewal [00:34:04] I love it. So one final question was for the builders listening here. If they wanted to know what was the most important piece of advice they should take from you given the world as you've seen it? The world is you've experienced it in the world as you've helped build it. What would that advice be?
Wes Selke [00:34:18] Find what you're really passionate about and follow it. And I know it's sometimes going to feel a little privileged to to say that. And I recognize that not everybody who works has that opportunity. But I would imagine that most of your listeners are in that position. Don't settle for good enough in your career, do something that's great. Do something that I like. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who talked about vocation, vocation, being the intersection of what the world needs most and what you're most passionate about. I love that idea. Find your vocation. Don't be worried about what other people are doing. It's always easy to get caught up in like, oh, so-and-so has had early success and I'm jealous. Don't worry about it. Take the long view of the arc of your career and follow it. Follow that. Find out what you're really excited about, what you're really passionate about, and set yourself on a course to pursue that and your doors will open. You'll be surprised what will happen and you'll find it.
Jesse Purewal [00:35:22] Well, Wes, thank you. It's been inspiring and full of practical wisdom and advice and I can assure anyone who's listening that the semi-fear you had being scared to death of being bored when you turn 40 with your mortgage, your boring job is not at all the reality of who you have become. So congratulations on everything and thanks for giving me the time.
Wes Selke [00:35:47] Absolutely. Thanks, Jesse. I appreciate the opportunity.
Jesse Purewal [00:35:59] Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in that conversation with Wes. It's been so rewarding to grow in my own career and be able to watch and learn from all the great things that he has done. Wes is someone I really admire and look up to for having both the patience to find his purpose and the conviction to pursue it. And the foundational skill building underneath it all was so crucial. It reminds me of what we learned back in Episode Two from Geetha Murali about how it's important to always be building relevant skill sets, even if you don't know precisely how they'll help you in your career over time. Wes had an aptitude for math from a young age and a love for finance and economics and learning new languages, and when he discovered he could put those things to work in a way that would drive social impact and empower people all over the world to unlock new possibilities. Well, in his words, it was a dream come true. What's also key in Wes the story is what he said about sharing yourself in your goals and dreams with people in your world. He talked about how when he was in business school, his classmates knew what he was about and what he was looking for so they could look out for him and his summer internship, which led to his first post MBA job, which then took him down the path he called his dream. That came because a classmate told him about it and wanted him to pursue it. So for this week's building blocks, it's a simple exercise, write down one thing about your hopes, goals or dreams, that if people knew it, they could help you become a better builder. Maybe like Wes, there's a career pivot you want to make, or maybe you're in search of the perfect business partner or co-founder or colleague. Maybe there's a learning journey around that people around you could help out with. Undoubtedly, there's a ton of people in your network who could help. Wes talked about how doors will open if you follow your passions, but sometimes those doors have to be opened for you. And the more people who know about who you are and what you believe and what you want to do, the more doors will open. Just ask Wes. If you want some templates and tips and tricks on how to get started, check out the show notes right here in the app. You're listening to this episode on or over on our website, Breakthrough-Builders.com. That's Breakthrough-Builders dotcom. Hit me up through the website and share some of your reflections. I'd love to hear from you. Get into dialog with you and do what I can to help take care of breakthrough builders and bewell.
Jesse Purewal [00:38:25] Thanks so much for listening to Breakthrough Builders. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help other listeners find us. And please tell your friends. Breakthrough Builders is a production of the industries Team at Qualtrics. The show is written and hosted by me, Jesse Purewal, mastering by Nate Crenshaw Post-production and music by Clean Cut Audio, part of the Three Seas Collective Design by Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Website by Gregory Hedon and Photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Jeremy Smith, John Johnson and Kylan Lundeen.