Find Your Passion

in a research lab.

Note: Why find passion? How to find passion? Let's listen to VC Fred Wilson's own personal experience. His other articles see here.

I graduated with a technology degree from one of the best engineering schools in the world, and I wrote code to pay for tuition in a research lab, and my grades were good, but I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Luckily my Gotham Gal (note: Fred Wilson's wife) knew what she wanted to do, so I came to New York with her. She was tossing her own fashion and retailing, and I applied to an engineering company where I used my coding skills to help design a new warship. It's a good salary, a job that is hard for a college graduate to find, but it's not my passion.

One night, at dinner, Gotham Gal's mother, Judy, told me, "go to the top school and get an MBA." With an engineering degree from MIT, plus an MBA from a top school, you can write a check for yourself. "I like to write a check for myself," so I took her advice.

But the business school application forms always ask the same question: "How do you plan your career?" "I really don't have a good answer to that question. I know we're going to live in New York, because that's where Gotham Gal's career is booming. I also know that I like technology. But there was no New York technology at the time. All good well-paid jobs are on Wall Street. That touched me. What is the intersection of Wall Street and technology? Of course it is financing technology companies.

So I did some research, and found that there were few companies with the title of the Wind. It was in the early 1980, compared to today, the scale of the venture was much smaller and much more closed. But I like to hear the word "risk" (venture). It makes me think of adventure. I was fascinated.

So I wrote about VC in my business school application. I told those schools (a total of 3 schools) I want to be a VC. One of them (Wharton) accepted my application and I spent the next 2 years commuting between Wharton and New York.

After a few weeks at school in the fall, my wife was driven (thank goodness she did) to ask me what I was going to do the next summer. I said: "Find a job in the VC circle." "That's my plan. There is nothing else.

I wrote to all the Wharton alumni at VC and finally got a letter. Bliss McCrum Let me "have lunch together." "I went." Then I got the summer jobs. Later, I graduated and developed it as a full-time job.

Lunch with Bliss happened 30 years ago. That meal was the key to my passion. It led me to a fantastic career, and I learned a lot from it and got in touch with so many great people.

Last week I received a Bliss voice message. I called him back. He now lives on a farm in Montana. He invited me there to go fishing with him. We have exchanged many stories of VC circles in the 1980 's. I told him I still used his rhetoric. He and his partner Milton taught me a lot and gave me a place to find my passion. I owe them a lot. Today, we return by doing the same thing in USV with the young people who want to find their passion. It feels good.

I mean, as far as I'm concerned, finding your passion is vital to having a full and fulfilling life. You have to put yourself in a certain environment to do this. I, first of all, there is a woman than I know what I want to do, relying on her constantly pushing me to "find their own passion", and finally have Milton and Bliss two people to their passion passed to me.

I can be sure there are many other ways to find your passion. But it doesn't work without help. So surround yourself with people who care about you and listen to them. Then good things come naturally.