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Voice of the Mountains: The Geography of Risk with Kyle Lefkoff
20 Plays7 minutes ago
Steve House sits down with Kyle Lefkoff, a rare figure who has lived at the intersection of serious alpinism and venture capital for nearly four decades. From discovering his "mutant gene" for rock climbing as a kid in Atlanta to surviving K2's deadliest season in 1986, from co-founding Array Biopharma (acquired by Pfizer for $12 billion) to serving as founding chairman of AIARE, Kyle shares how the same principles—luck, timing, patience, and pattern recognition—govern success on both big walls and in boardrooms. The conversation explores his philosophy of "where matters," his belief that geography shapes who we can become, and why he chose Boulder as the terrain where he could develop both his athletic and entrepreneurial potential. Kyle reflects on "Slater's Law" (the climb isn't over until the ropes are on the ground), the parallels between powder days and market momentum, and his ultimate legacy: building bridges—between climbers and guides, entrepreneurs and investors, communities and their mountains.
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Transcript
Slater's Law and Life Principles
00:00:00
Speaker
Here is a moment every climber knows. You've reached the summit and the ropes are being put away, getting ready for the descent, and your partner offers a handshake. But it's refused.
00:00:13
Speaker
Wait until we get down. That's exactly what Rob Slater told Kyle Lefkopf at the top of a sandstone tower in Colorado many years ago. It was a small moment, but one that became a lifelong principle Kyle calls it Slater's Law.
00:00:29
Speaker
The climb is not over until the ropes are on the ground. Kyle Lefkoff has spent 40 years living by that rule, not only in the mountains, but in one of the most unforgiving arenas of modern business, venture capital.
00:00:43
Speaker
Kyle was a member of the 1986 American expedition to K2 during one of the deadliest seasons in mountaineering history.
Venture Capital and Climbing in Boulder
00:00:50
Speaker
He later co-founded Array Biopharma and remained chairman for 20 years, long enough to see it acquired by Pfizer for nearly $12 billion. dollars He helped create the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education, creating the gold standard for avalanche education in the United States.
00:01:10
Speaker
But what sets Kyle apart is not just what he has built, it is how he has built, what he builds, and who he builds with. He likes to say that he works slowly and deliberately and in one place.
00:01:24
Speaker
He chose Boulder, Colorado, not for the wealth or status or obviously the beaches, but because it was the only place where both of his callings could exist side by side, the climber and the investor.
00:01:36
Speaker
He built a consistent pipeline of business by building bridges to what he calls elite human capital. This episode is not about some accounts or portfolio returns.
00:01:47
Speaker
It is about geography. It is about risk. It is about the patience required to build something that lasts and about the wisdom it takes to hold off on the celebrations until everyone is safely down.
00:02:00
Speaker
The outcome is not the destination to strive for. Bringing everyone home is the destination to strive for. Building bridges for others to cross it' the destination to strive for. Democratizing talent, information, medicine, education.
00:02:14
Speaker
For climber and venture capitalist Kyle Lefkoff, these are the destinations to strive for. My name is Steve Howes, and this is Voice of the Mountains.
00:02:35
Speaker
If you're enjoying the show and want to take the next step in your training, join our newsletter and receive a free four-week sample training plan. Head on over to uphillathlete.com slash let's go.
00:02:47
Speaker
And once you sign up, you'll instantly get a link to try out some of our most popular training plans. It's a great way to get a feel for how we train our athletes for big mountain goals. Check it out uphillathlete.com slash let's go. That's uphillathlete.com slash L-E-T-S-G-O.
00:03:09
Speaker
Kyle, welcome to Voice the Mountains. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me.
Luck, Timing, and Life Choices
00:03:15
Speaker
I want to start with something that you wrote. You said, some days, that's the summit.
00:03:20
Speaker
On others, it's failure and a long walk home. In every effort, luck and timing play a major role. Most people in either of your worlds, whether it be venture capital or alpinism, often try to obfuscate or maybe even hide from that reality. They talk about their skills, all the preparation they've done, what great masters they are of their space. But you put luck and unforeseeable conclusion at the center.
00:03:45
Speaker
Why do you do that? It's unavoidable in both of those spheres, both in climbing and in venture capital. You cannot discount the the the luck of the draw, and also the timing. It's so much easier to succeed when the wind's behind you and the skies are clearer than it is in stormy conditions.
00:04:04
Speaker
Can you give me like an example of of that, in either either in climbing or skiing or ah or in business? um you know My favorite analogy are powder days because because they don't happen very often.
00:04:17
Speaker
But when they're when they do, you can see them coming if you're an experienced guide. And you can be in position, if you know your terrain, to to serve up the best day of someone's life sure for for a powder day.
00:04:32
Speaker
The same thing happens in business. As an experienced venture capitalist, you can see the momentum build in markets that you're very familiar with. You can see the stars begin to align. There's no certainty, but you at least have the opportunity to have the wind at your back, and that's when you charge.
00:04:47
Speaker
and and And to succeed with your entrepreneur in favorable conditions is is one of the great joys in the venture capital business. So let's talk about your sort of journey.
00:05:00
Speaker
origin story for a minute. Take me back to growing up what you described as being an intense kid, quote unquote, in Atlanta, Georgia. And at some point you discovered that mountains and climbing were the place where, which, which fit you, where you fit.
00:05:18
Speaker
Tell me about that. Take me back to Georgia all those years ago. I believe that that there exists a mutant gene in rock climbing that we're all born with and that that appears early in your life as rock climbing.
00:05:36
Speaker
You don't know it till you experience it, but once you've experienced it, you've lost You've been lost to rock climbing. It's often the case here in Boulder that parents of of children who are friends of mine will ask me to to guide their 11-year-old daughter.
00:05:51
Speaker
yeah will you take she She loves the gym. she loves She climbs on everything. She's obsessed with was going to to to the rock gym. And I'd really like you, Kyle, to take her outside and climb on real rock. Would you do that? And my response is, I'll be happy to do that, and I'll be happy to guide her.
00:06:07
Speaker
Are you prepared to accept the consequences if she has the mutant gene? Because then you've lost your child to rock climbing for the rest of their lives. There won't be anything else. there's no yeah the The gene is switched on and there's no switching it off. they've it'siring it off It's activated.
00:06:25
Speaker
It's not a phase they're going through. It's hard to report. It's the rest their life. You possess it too, so you know exactly what i'm talking about. So as a child growing up in Atlanta, I knew early on I was really in the wrong place.
00:06:42
Speaker
I didn't know why. it was a i was disconnected from from my peers and my surroundings as a child. um I was pretty precocious and i I read extensively from my earliest ages.
00:06:57
Speaker
But I didn't know I was a rock climber until I went to summer camp. at age 11 and was introduced to the sport by ah an Outward Bound instructor there as part of the camp program. Came back from that summer, turned 12 years old, and immediately began climbing on every rock in Atlanta.
00:07:15
Speaker
Found a group of young peers at age 12 and 13 and 14, most of whom I got to meet because I was a gymnast and our gymnastics team was filled with climbers. And those are a natural a natural connection.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, sure. and And then when I was 15, I didn't have a car and getting to a lot of the crags in North Georgia and North Carolina required vehicle in those days. But I was fortunate to meet Rich Gottlieb, one of the great rock climbers of his generation, who was 21 at the time and had a truck and a rack, and he wasn't afraid to use either of them. And I went on a campaign with him to to it on a journey of discovery of the crags of Georgia and North Carolina. These were unexplored, unknown places in there in those days.
00:08:01
Speaker
Every climb we did was a first ascent. Everything we did ventured into the unknown. and was in retrospect, one of the most exciting times of my young life. So that's what really hooked me on the whole thing.
00:08:13
Speaker
oh I also, I also read extensively in the, as you have in the literature of mountaineering and in those days, this is the, the early nineteen seventy s Um, you know, i I took my bar mitzvah money and bought a rack and a copy of Royal Robins advanced rock craft and, and devoted myself to, to trying to, trying to become a rock climber in what, in what was in those days, a ah really, a really niche dangerous sport.
00:08:43
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. So what year are we
Evolution of Climbing and Culture
00:08:47
Speaker
talking? 1970? Yeah, to five? okay and so what was the state of the art in rock climbing in nineteen seventy three to five You still had a hammer on your on your will and sit harness. Okay. Your EBs and your and uah and yourre ah your brand new pearl on rope, kind of a new new idea.
00:09:11
Speaker
Right. ah Were proudly displayed on your on your rack. ay You didn't wear a helmet. Yeah. And you had a rack of stoppers.
00:09:22
Speaker
And any place that you couldn't place a stopper, you placed a pin. A piton. A piton. So, and EB's, as as some people may know, there that was like the very first shoe specifically designed for rock climbing. And it was a pretty big departure from the mountaineering boots that people climbed in prior to that, which had like the classic lug soles with the lifted heel and the deep lugs and in the tread. And they were completely smooth on the bottom. And they had these big rams that went up the side. theyre In hindsight, they're they're very like boxy. They look like ah a Volkswagen bus from the similar era, right? They're like very kind of square and tall. But it was a huge revolution to have footwear a specific to rock climbing. And of course, it's evolved immensely to what it is today. But the basic concept, hasn't actually really changed. if Think about it in what's at almost 50 years now. So pretty amazing.
00:10:20
Speaker
It really was. They were exceptionally uncomfortable as well. Yeah, yeah. I ah did have, I never owned a pair, but I borrowed a pair for a while when I was traveling around when I was in my, when I was 18, 19 and I was in Slovenia, i borrowed a pair of rock shoes from a guy and they happened to be EB's. So I had a little experience. They were probably from 1972 because they'd been worn a lot by the time I got my hands on them. That's classic.
00:10:49
Speaker
So and clothing wise, I think you're maybe even representing some of the some of the fashion of the era for rock climbers. My heroes were were Royal Robbins and sharon Henry Barber, both of whoms both of whom were in their phase at that point, Royal kind of at the end of his career, but Henry absolutely in the thick of it as the best rock climbers in the world. and And both were mountain guides. Both were you know meaningful rock guides in their careers.
00:11:19
Speaker
So the way they dressed, the way they acted, the... the the the seriousness with which they took their responsibilities and their sport were really influential on me. And I i tried to emulate those at every opportunity.
00:11:32
Speaker
And I would like to call out the the beautiful taupe colored cap you're wearing and how that is like a ah debt. We talked about this before we started recording, but that is just a dead on ringer for Henry's classic.
00:11:45
Speaker
cap. And I know it because I've seen so many pictures of him climbing all his famous routes that, that, you know, hot Henry, as he was known at the time was, was doing these first ascents of all these difficult, still difficult, actually rock climbs, uh, all across primarily the Northeast, but as well as West where he, where he traveled often. So, you know, you're looking, you're holding up the, you're holding the torch here today, kyle I want to, I want to, I want to commend you for that. You're looking good. Yeah.
00:12:17
Speaker
So, you know, you talked about ah Stone Mountain, like in your book. and And I i don' want to call out, i since I'm going to mention the book again, that you have a new book and it's called High Exposure. i have a copy of it sitting here in the booth and beautiful. Everybody should check it out.
00:12:39
Speaker
But we're not necessarily here to promote your book, but it's it's been a lot of... A lot of the thinking and thoughts that went into the book when I received a copy, it was just all these same thoughts, like a lot of the conversations we've having. And it felt, a lot of it felt very voice of the mountains to me. And you did talk to guys like Henry Barber, who's who's still alive and kicking and and telling his stories and and so on. So that's, ah but I want to take me back to Stone Mountain.
00:13:11
Speaker
Also, the Stone Mountain has a bit of a, ah historical, cultural significance. You want to tell us about that a little bit? Well, Stone Mountain is ah is a large granite, bian knock and just outside Atlanta, 20 minutes from downtown.
00:13:25
Speaker
It's got an 800-foot north face. Huge. you Huge. One of the biggest in the Southeast, and there's a lot of big you know granite domes in the Southeast.
00:13:36
Speaker
And it's easily accessible from Atlanta. It was 20 minutes by car from my home. And you know in in the early 70s, it had only been climbed a couple of times and only via some pretty torturous aid climbing.
00:13:52
Speaker
But there's quite a lot of free climbing down at the base of the north face of Stone Mountain. There's some cracks and chimneys and corners that are free climbable for a pitch or two. But, you know, it could have been one of the greatest granite crags in America, so close to an urban area. I mean, where else is is there anything like that on the East Coast?
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah. But there was a there was an a major sculptural project on the north face of Stone Mountain in the starting in the late 60s that went all the way through the mid-70s.
00:14:30
Speaker
in which a group of of the the racist owners of Stone Mountain Park in those days, before it was a state park, chiseled a sculpture of the of the the three losers of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Andrew E. Davis, riding on their horse. Giant sculpture. that just Really?
00:14:51
Speaker
How giant? How big is this thing? you know, 100 meters across and 180 meters high. I mean, it dominates the thing. Chiseled out with the power, you I mean, just totally defaced the mountain to to celebrate these traitors, these men who had betrayed their country and fought a brutal civil war in defense of slavery.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. hard to Hard to wrap your head around that these days. So both culturally as a rock climber, you know as a human being, as a student of history, as a person who thought deeply about you know these forces that it had had surrounded me as I was a child growing up in Atlanta.
00:15:46
Speaker
This was, there could not be a strong a bigger contrast between my worldview and you know this this giant giant sculpture of the three losers. and And when they finished the sculpture, i had done quite a lot of rock climbing with my friends on the base of Stone Mountain on either side of the sculpture. So we weren't at risk of you know of any falling debris and basically surreptitiously under the tree line so that the yeah park rangers weren't bothering us.
00:16:14
Speaker
um When they finished the sculpture, they shut down Stone Mountain for rock climbing forever. And it's never been allowed since then. Wow. That was to me both, a you know, that happened when I was 16 years old. And went to me, that was both a physical assault to me as a climber that that you would you would die you would take this terrain away from from all the people who who really enjoyed it.
00:16:43
Speaker
And also a cultural thing that that demonstrated, you know, what ah what a racist, anti-Semitic culture
Boulder: A Cultural and Innovative Hub
00:16:50
Speaker
Atlanta was. It was the most progressive place in the South in those days, in the 70s.
00:16:56
Speaker
But it was that was the culture of it. And so when I was 16, I got my driver's license in Georgia. Then you got your driver's license and you're 16 years old. And I got in my father's car that summer after I finished rock guiding in North Carolina for my job that summer.
00:17:12
Speaker
And I drove to Boulder, Colorado, and it was an epiphany for me to come to Boulder, Colorado. There was no racism. There was no anti-Semitism here. Climbers, the whole culture was built around climbers and the climbing is everywhere here. The weather fantastic.
00:17:27
Speaker
there are no giant bugs on the route that you're trying to climb through. just it just blew my mind how great it was out here. And i realized that that this place and this culture was where I always belonged. It was where I really should have been my whole life. Yeah.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah. I want to go back to that for a second, because one of the things I wanted to ask you about is like how that felt as a Jewish kid growing up in, I mean, I'm not going out on a limb here, I don't think, to say that you were in a minority, you know, cultural and religious group in Atlanta at that time. And so that that must have also affected you, right? Like that could, like kind of, did you have that feeling like, oh, that could be me? Yeah.
00:18:16
Speaker
yeah race ah Racism and anti-Semitism were the background noises of my youth. You're surrounded by it. You can't get away from It's everywhere.
00:18:26
Speaker
you know And it's in that society. It makes you feel an outsider. And climbers are very much outsiders in most of the places that they that they exist, most of the places they live.
00:18:39
Speaker
so It's a common feeling, don't you think, amongst climbers that you're an outsider to the culture you're in? Yeah, I think that that is true, but not but you know you'll notice, and of course there's places like whether it's Boulder or Chamonix or even here in Austria where I'm living right now, I always make the analogy like if you if you go to...
00:19:00
Speaker
Chamonix or Zermatt or Karls on Grossgorkner, the village up the road here that's the base, the highest mountain in Austria. you You know, if you go to the central square, there'll be two buildings there. One's going to be the Catholic Church and the other is going to be the mountain guide office.
00:19:17
Speaker
And those two things are are the but the like two most important cultural institutions in those villages. So if we go to a place like Chamonix or Boulder, I mean, Boulder's obviously, you know, doesn't have a Catholic church in its main square, but or probably about guide office, but they, um there's instead, what, what do you have? i guess, I mean, I gotta make a joke. And you have, you know, the brewery, right? Okay. Yeah, there you go. That's it. That's it. That dude, Mountaineering in the, in the brewery. What's the name of the brewery again? It's got like a sun for the logo. I can't remember.
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah. So, so that would be the, that would be the replacement. But if you get to one of these places, you, you aren't the minority. ah You're not the outsider. You're like part of the core group. And I think that's part of what attracts us. You know, I don't have so many friends that live in, as do you, that live Chamonix or Canmore, Alberta, or like, you know, it could be Revelstoke where you, where you are, like mountain guys are, part of that. And and that, I, I have to say, you know, you're a generation ahead of me, but you know, that but for sure wasn't that way, you know, 50 years ago where, where mountain mountain years of any stripe had any kind of, uh, what's the word like, um,
00:20:37
Speaker
social, social haft, social, like, importance. I mean, maybe in in Europe, I think maybe that was, ah ah came around a little earlier. You had, of course, like, you know, Maurice Herzog and the the great heroes of the first descents of the 8,000ers, all that, that race through the 20s, 50s. But,
00:20:58
Speaker
those were Those were exceptions. those were the those were the that was the That was the beginning, the old times. When I came to Boulder in the summer of 1975, I think it was the only place in America where there was a true city with a climbing culture in and And as I said, that had ah just a profound effect on me as a young climber. I mean, and and there was no, as I say, there was no racism here. There was no anti-Semitism.
00:21:23
Speaker
What there was, was elitism. Boulder's always been an elitist place. And it's the two things that have characterized Boulder are elite human capital and elite human performance.
00:21:37
Speaker
And as a venture capitalist and a and ah and a mountain guide, I'm down with both of those. Right, right, right. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that. not ah That is true. All those things you say are true, whether it's the you know city with the climbing culture and all the ah the elite performance.
00:21:55
Speaker
You know, um I've never never met him, but Jim Collins talks about that quite a bit, like his books or even in his speaking that I've listened to where he's talking even about his wife and her her decision to get into triathlon and some of that story. And it is, I think, part of the culture, like we're just going to, we're going to do this thing. We don't know, you know, and of course you start off like everybody, like, I don't know if I can do this, but if I'm going to do it,
00:22:24
Speaker
I mean, that's the mindset in Boulder, I would say. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to be the best I can be, absolutely. And maybe I'm going to be the best in the world. Actually, being the best in the world is going to be my goal. And I'm going to find out if I have the genetic potential to achieve that.
00:22:36
Speaker
And that's sort of the starting, that's a starting gate. Is is that, I mean, not everyone, of course, but like that's that's not uncommon. in a place like that. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. the The interesting thing in Boulder is that there are so many elite athletes in each of their respective sports that no matter how good you think you are at your bit your thing, there's a thousand guys you've never heard of in Boulder that'll kick your ass every single day.
00:23:03
Speaker
hundred for some people For some people, that's a that's a devastating ego blow. They can't handle it. you know They just can't handle not being the best at their thing. Where they came from, they were they were the elite. right And here they're just another schlubby guy who does the thing.
00:23:18
Speaker
oh For others like me, it was and inspirational to be surrounded by a community of world-class thinkers and world-class athletes who are who were devoted to both of those things.
00:23:31
Speaker
both both their intellectual development as well as their the their their sport. What goes into creating? I mean, that's like a question nobody knows the answer, but i'm going to ask it anyway. what goes What makes, how does that happen?
00:23:45
Speaker
What is the perfect storm? It's partly geography that brings people to a place. you It has to be an attractive place.
00:23:55
Speaker
And there has to be a concentration of the elite human capital that gets as Jim Collins says, gets the flywheel going. Yeah. But then, you know, a lot of it is luck and timing. There has to be some successes that feed on themselves.
00:24:13
Speaker
And here in Boulder, we had some early successes in the 1970s in the tech industry. IBM moved to town. Storage tech became a large company. Amgen was started here.
00:24:24
Speaker
There were some meaningful early successes. Celestial Seasonings was the foundations of the natural foods business here. The lab there, the university there. The University of Colorado is here and is an excellent public university. The National Laboratories, NIST, NOAA, NCAR, were formed here in the 60s, there was a generation of elite human capital that came and got the flywheel going so that when I first arrived in the 70s, I could see it happen. And I realized that this is the place I wanted to be.
00:24:56
Speaker
And then when I finished business school and came back here full time for my for my career to start my career, there was no question that this is where I was going to do it. Did if if, so you had that, you were able to recognize that. Are you able to help people recognize those other places? Maybe Boulder is not their jam, but maybe like, what do you say? What would you say to like a younger person who's looking for their version of of Boulder? Or is there just a list and there's only like, I don't know, three places on it?
00:25:24
Speaker
yeah I think the latter. i mean, there's really this phenomenon of ah elite human capital producing the flywheel and a you know in ah in ah in a segment or in an industry or in a certain thing. It only happens in a couple of places.
00:25:40
Speaker
In the venture capital business, it's Silicon Valley for for technology and Boston for life sciences for us. Boulder still kind of a frontier in those in those markets, but it's an important one. It's it's you know it's in the top 10 by investment in both of those both of those segments.
00:26:00
Speaker
And it's a city of 100,000 people. So on a per capita basis, it's multiples of those other spots. Yeah. So I want to go back to your childhood for a second and, you know,
00:26:14
Speaker
I want to drill in a little bit on this, something you wrote about, and it's something I've experienced too, but you you said you you didn't feel like you're, and I may be paraphrasing here, but you didn't feel that your intensity was welcome, that you were an intense kid. You used this phrase often. And you also said precocious earlier a few moments ago, a few minutes ago.
00:26:40
Speaker
how does How did that, how did what was your experience of that as a kid? and And did it make you feel like an outsider? um Where were your, you know, you were reading a lot, then you discovered climbing, you could go deep into that. Were these, but did you just sort of find like these niches where this intensity was accepted and you could kind of relax and go into those things?
00:27:04
Speaker
had a lot of, I think in retrospect as a kid, I had a lot of physical and intellectual energy. had to expend those on something. And fortunately for me, early on, I found my climbing gene was active and and and I could could put all of that into the into my climbing.
00:27:22
Speaker
yeah that That was a good place for me to expend my energy. you know One of the things that I think, i want to I'm curious if you agree with this, but I would venture to observe that Back then, I'm just going to say, it was much more complex to become a good climber than it is now. And now you can become a good climber in the bouldering gym with no more investment than, a you know, go through, wear wear out five pairs of shoes and go through couple gallons of chalk, and I can guarantee you'll be like a pretty good climber.
00:27:59
Speaker
Back then it was like, kind it was really hard to figure out all of the, the art of climbing and whether it was, you know, even just guidebooks were completely different thing back then. The roots didn't have often anchors. You didn't really know how you would get down. Uh, forget about like photos with lines drawn on them, like, ah you know, placing gear.
00:28:26
Speaker
ah You know, mean, we both remember the advent of camming devices. I mean, that was not that long ago and now it's just, you know, second nature to all of us, right? Like, um, not all the safety equipment that you mentioned earlier, like we just all routinely wear helmets. They're so light and unobtrusive now, you know, we don't hardly think about it.
00:28:48
Speaker
um In just every way, it's so much easier. Do you think that that's climate changing climbing for the better, for the worse, for the neutral? Like, how do you see that how people go into, into climbing now? Because one of the things with mastery is that you have to be really obsessed to become really good.
00:29:09
Speaker
And the, in the old days, like you had to be obsessed to even get started. And so you were more likely to become really good because you started off as an intense, obsessed person. And now I think a lot of different personalities come into climbing. Am I off base?
00:29:25
Speaker
No, I think you're right. I think i think climbing and and alpinism in general have been democratized. They're more accessible to people now. They're not as dangerous.
00:29:36
Speaker
Mountain guiding is is a form of mentorship that's available to everyone. In my generation, mentorship was the only way to become a good rock climber. There wasn't really a lot of rock guiding going on and and and there were no climbing gyms. So the way people entered the sport is they had a friend who was in who was a good rock climber and taught them how to climb.
00:29:58
Speaker
yeah and And to a large extent, you were self-taught. Until I went to do my guides training in Chamonix in 1980, I'd never really seen a you know, what high-end mountain guides did in terms of mentoring and teaching their clients. I didn't understand any of the pedagogy around around alpinism.
00:30:17
Speaker
And that was that was kind of an epiphany. The same thing was true in those days of of of powder skiing. I mean, you know, the skis were skinny. It was really complicated to learn to be a powder skier. was painful to learn to powder ski.
00:30:30
Speaker
you know, and you only had a few days to do it. And you really, the back country thing was was ah unknown. the The avalanche information was was obscure and there were only a ah couple of people in the country in possession of real expertise in that area.
00:30:46
Speaker
today You can take an area class, you've you've got these nice big fat skis and all this high tech gear and and it's been democratized. It's available to people who who maybe aren't completely obsessed with it the way you and I were in our childhood.
Making Mountain Experiences Accessible
00:31:01
Speaker
I wasted a good 10 years of my life learning to ski tele. that was That was completely unnecessary. A complete waste of time. I mean, I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy it in sort of a sadomatic, stochistic way, but but but I will never teleski again of my life. I can absolutely promise that.
00:31:22
Speaker
But that was the only way to ski in the backcountry because you couldn't you couldn't go like you couldn't walk otherwise because it was just alpine gear or telegear or cross-country gear. I bought my pair of Fisher Air Carbons with the Silveretta bindings in 1980 for my guides course.
00:31:39
Speaker
And... The guy at Snell's says, oh, are you buying some Rondonet skis? I said, Rondonet, what does that mean? He goes, that means you can't telly ski. Friends for can't telly.
00:31:50
Speaker
i think that's great. Oh, The...
00:31:56
Speaker
the So, you know, I do think it's important that these things become democratized because I truly believe, I mean, that's what the whole mission of uphill athlete is around. And I mean, it's been around some, when we're going to get to these, some of your contributions you've made through area and a American mountain guide association and so on.
00:32:17
Speaker
It's, ah we both believe so. ah passionately in the like the good of, of being in the mountains and, and, and being in the mountains with friends and and doing these things and climbing and skiing and all of this, that, that we want that we both actively participated in developing that, that for others. So I don't want people to get the idea that we're going to pull off, try to like go into some often some elitist tangent and talk about how, how back in the good old days, Kyle, you know, we're not going to do that. Cause I actually,
00:32:49
Speaker
I think it just self-selected for a certain kind of person that was a very narrow person, like personality type. And we were all, I mean, i was definitely, and still am in many, in many metrics, but kind of a fringe person. Like I'm not, not in the middle of the bell curve and that's okay. I'm just,
00:33:08
Speaker
that way. And that's partly why I got into climbing. And I think it's partly why you got into into climbing. You exemplify elite human performance, Steve. And that's been a a real theme in your life, you know, and what you democratized with your uphill athlete training books was something that, again, I had to find through other mentors and there was no information around how do I train for this sport? How do I get better at it?
00:33:37
Speaker
There was a lot of, when I was a gymnast, there was a lot of information about how to become a better gymnast. There was a long history of how do you train specifically for these movements and using these apparatus in a way that maximizes your your ability to do the trick, right? And all these techniques ways to learn the trick but there was no way to learn the trick in rock climbing you know you had to go do the trick yeah and and the only the the way i learned to do these boulder problems was watching john gill and jim holloway do the problem and try to duplicate that and try to understand how how i could how i could climb the problem as well and it was really hard
00:34:17
Speaker
And interestingly, I only learned this about, i don't know, it was within the last 10 years when Josh Wharton told me that he just watches tons of YouTube videos of Adam Andra and Chris Sharma. And then he's like, I'm just, I study there. And he like is analyzing. i was like, oh, of course. Why did I never think of of that? You know, of course, I'm not watching Adam Andra because I could never climb at that level. So it sort of doesn't apply to me, but i need to, I can find people closer. academically interesting, but not. but Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. for us yeah Exactly. I can't, i it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't apply here, but I can find people who can climb just a little bit higher than my level and, and learn from that just from YouTube, which is amazing, right? Like, again, democratization of information and, and it's not there necessarily to to teach people how to
00:35:10
Speaker
do certain movements. But but it thought was available in my early climbing days and and when I went to college in the gunks, you know, I would I would I would take every opportunity I had to watch Henry Barber climb in the gunks in the mid 70s just to watch him climb.
00:35:25
Speaker
So much from his footwork and his body positions, the way he addressed the rock with his shoulders and his hips. you know, the kind of the kind of, you know, he was, he he had incredibly, he had great hip flexibility and he he could step really highly on steep terrain and how could he lever himself using his feet and his hips into certain positions on steep terrain.
00:35:50
Speaker
I could only learn that from watching him. And I really devoted myself to watching and climbing with him. One of the great things in those days were there that there weren't that many great climbers. There weren't, you know, there were only a few people at his level. And it was like playing golf with Arnold Palmer. You could just go up and say, Henry, I'd really like to belay you on this thing. Can I give you a catch?
00:36:12
Speaker
Because I'd been a because i'd been a a successful gymnast, I knew a lot about spotting and catching. ah and so for And we didn't have any pads in those days. So for bouldering or for for rock climbing, I was a good belayer and a good spotter.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Balance and Mentorship in Venture Capital
00:36:30
Speaker
so so i was And I was, you know, a big, beefy kid. So, so you know, Henry let me belay him sometimes. Yeah. I actually think that you and Henry would have similar body types. You're both pretty tall and yeah. So I can see how that would apply well to you. to to you yeah
00:36:48
Speaker
When you moved to Boulder, what did you sacrifice in that choice? I sacrificed nothing from the standpoint of being a mountain guide or my aspiration to be a mountain guide um and a rock climber and an alpinist.
00:37:04
Speaker
In fact, I thoroughly enhanced my opportunities to climb every day, which I have consistently done for the last 40 years. well ah What I gave up in my venture capital career was a chance to be on the main stage in Silicon Valley or Boston or New York, to be the center of attention and the center of of of the action.
00:37:29
Speaker
um and to pursue the highest levels of wealth and status that venture capitalists are obsessed about. um But those things weren't that that wasn't really what mattered to me. So so i was it was a good trade off for me.
00:37:46
Speaker
It was a happy medium. what What mattered for you then? i Early, what mattered was climbing and skiing and being able to have a career and use my intellectual gifts at the same time I ah could pursue my guiding aspirations.
00:38:03
Speaker
But as I progressed in my career, what became important to me were the quality of the relationships and the quality of of of the companies that I was involved in and trying to achieve mastery as a venture capitalist.
00:38:17
Speaker
I had some great mentors in that world who who had done so in Boulder. And I wanted to emulate them. Can you tell who was that? Who would have? Well, the guy who hired me for my first job after business school in 1985, before the K-2 expedition, was a guy named Mert Mercure, who was a great entrepreneur here in Boulder. He was a physicist from the University of Colorado, climber and a skier.
00:38:40
Speaker
And um he founded Ball Aerospace, which is the largest company here in Boulder. He was kind of the Elon Musk of his generation. He invented the satellite business. I sure know ball aerospace. I don't, you know, my, my little secret is I wanted to be a aeronautical engineer when I was a kid, cause I wanted to be an astronaut.
00:38:59
Speaker
Like that was, so I was really into everything around flying and flight and aeronautical engineering and stuff. So I learned a lot about those, but I'm so, I didn't know his name, but that's super interesting. And so, so how did, how did that come to pass? How did you get that job?
00:39:15
Speaker
Well, i i yeah I've been coming to Boulder for a long time. My rack lived here, so you know I felt like this was my home since that summer of 75. And after business school, I had i had i had called on Merck many times, offered my services, had done a little consulting for him had involved myself in some projects, guided him on the third Flatiron.
00:39:40
Speaker
um ah you know I tried to make myself useful. And when I graduated from business school, I had some offers to go to Wall Street to work for investment banks, which was the typical thing you did with a University of Chicago MBA in 1985, go to be an investment banker.
00:39:57
Speaker
And and you know I liked climbing in the gunk. So you know that that might have worked for me. But Really, i my guiding at that point was at a stage where I really wanted to be guiding as much as I was working. And Merck offered me the opportunity to do that. he he you know He said, if you come to work first, we can't pay you like Wall Street, but you can prove that you can make money and we'll give you that opportunity. And we'll give you April off to go to Chamonix and ski tour and do the ski touring program in the Alps.
00:40:28
Speaker
And we'll give you July off to go rock climbing and rock guide wherever you're going, which was mostly in Europe as well. And so um I don't know that ah there were any other opportunities available to me that that had that much flexibility in that opportunity.
00:40:42
Speaker
But you had it's it's you had a significant relationship with him that he even knew that those would be the carrots that would really motivate you, right? like and And when I graduated business school, I told him I'm committed to this expedition to the north face of K2 in the spring of 1986, so I'm going on that expedition.
00:41:03
Speaker
So I'm not going to really start my job full-time until I come back in the summer of 1986. And he said, that was fine. And when I and when when i came back to Boulder after the K-2 expedition, I showed up for work on August 1st. And he said, oh, you're here.
00:41:19
Speaker
said, yeah. He said, you know, Lefkoff, we thought you had low survivability potential. We didn't know we were actually going to give you this job.
K2 Expedition: Challenges and Insights
00:41:31
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a little morbid, but yeah. Yeah. ah So tell me about this 86 expedition. who was there?
00:41:42
Speaker
What happened? I was invited along. a in support of a group of elite climbers by my friend, George Lowe. George and I had done some rock climbing together and he was a hero of mine and for his, as you know, one of the greatest alpinists, American alpinists who's ever lived. Absolutely.
00:42:01
Speaker
And could I just pause for a quick bit of context? George Lowe and his partner, Chris Jones, climbed a route on the North Face of North Twin in 1972 that, you know which i Did a variation and repeated with our mutual friend, Marco Prezel years, years, years, decades later, first ones to repeat that.
00:42:21
Speaker
I can't remember what year that was now, but what I wanted to say about George is that in 1972, that was the most difficult climb ever done in the mountains anywhere. And it's at a fast pace, two days walk from the nearest road.
00:42:37
Speaker
Really, really, really, really impressive. And he is involved in so many other things and he's such a great, wonderful human and brilliant guy and in so many ways and I admire him in so many ways. So shout out to George if you're ever are listening.
00:42:49
Speaker
Well, I hope you'll listen to this and and now he's moved to Boulder and and he's in an apartment here. and I'm hoping to go climbing with him next week. I mean, it's just, you know, Climbing with your heroes is one of the greatest things in life, isn't it? Isn't it? Mm-hmm.
00:43:05
Speaker
100%. had organized this expedition, and it was really some of the greatest alpinists of my generation that he brought along. It was Alex Lowe, Chuck Quinn, Dave Chismond, Catherine Freer, who was a fantastic woman alpinist of that generation.
00:43:24
Speaker
um And they all, and and Steve Swenson, another great climber, another great climber and alpinist of my generation. So very much the elite, the A-team of, excuse me, the A-team of American climbing at that point to try the north face of K2, which ah up until that point, you had to go through China and no one had gone, entered through China. All the all the people who had climbed K2 had gone through Pakistan.
00:43:51
Speaker
Baltic trench. So there are no porters available. There was a long march up the K2 Glacier. it was going to require a lot of logistics and a lot of planning. There was no guarantee you could even get to the base of the thing across. Nobody had tried to get across the K2 Glacier. Yeah. Not to mention a bunch of river crossings where there's no bridges and... Camels and Kierkei tribesmen in the Teclamakan Desert. and I mean, it just...
00:44:18
Speaker
It was an adventure. And, yeah and, ah and they needed, you know, they needed worker bees who were competent alpinists, but who weren't at their level to come along and help schlep all this stuff, you know, put them in position so they could climb the, climb the North face of K2. So that's what I signed up for. I'd never been on a Himalayan trip.
00:44:36
Speaker
I thought it'd, you know, it'd be interesting to see how a big expedition like that would go. And I was at a point in my life after business school, but before I started my career where I had the, the space to do it.
00:44:47
Speaker
So, um, and it was, it was an interesting, extra I mean, I learned the the key takeaway for me really is that I'm, I had just, I, I did it. I'm glad I did it, but I have no interest in, in Himalayan expeditioning.
00:45:01
Speaker
Right. Um, there was no concept of your style of climbing in the in the, with Marco and and Vince in the, in the high mountains where you're fast and light and, climbing an alpine style in these big peaks that was not what was going on man it was spools of fixed ropes and moving stuff up the mountain and it was like a construction project and i just wasn't it wasn't that in that part of it was not that interesting to me Yeah, that was starting to happen with some of the Poles, you know, some of the Brits, you know, you had, you know, Boardman Tasker, you know, you had, ah you know, Wojtek Kurtika, Christoph Veliki, some of these. the some Well, Reinhold Mester and Peter Habler climbed the the. Yeah, of course. Climbed the Hidden Peak.
00:45:46
Speaker
in very Alpine style, right? So people were starting to think about that, but that was not what was going on the north base of K2 in 86. That was the exception to the rule. One thing I want to say though, because my first expedition to the Himalaya was similar. It was like, I was with a big expedition. There was 18 of us and I signed up to be a worker bee. I was, I had my 19th birthday in base camp. I was really young. And the, uh,
00:46:12
Speaker
it offered a It offered an on-ramp to that world where, I mean, I had no, like you, I had no illusions that I would go anywhere close to the summit. It was on Nangaparbat. But I was like, just so happy to be there and be, I was just, I was so excited to just carry a tent up for somebody that needed to take a tent up to the hike camp or I don't know, whatever. Like I was just beyond excited to do all that. And I think that we, now that so many more people climb out, like,
00:46:41
Speaker
All the private alpinists climb al alpine style and the commercial guided groups all climb expedition style. And i I feel like there's this vacuum where there aren't many, at least from the West, aren't many you know expedition style trips going where where you can take 18 people and half of them can be you know relatively inexperienced and and learn a lot. I mean, i remember just sitting around like hearing so many stories. I mean, we had guys on that expedition that had climbed 5,000, 8,000 meter peaks in 1990. I mean, that was like a was major accomplishment. I really looked at it as an opportunity for mentorship too, because I wanted to see George Lowe making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. you know how How does he think about when to go and when not to go and how to position people and when to climb and what not to climb? He's so thoughtful and so successful in the mountains.
00:47:31
Speaker
So successful. deserving of all the, all the summits he's gotten, but also so such, such a durable, survivable guy that he he clearly was a great decision maker in the mountains. And I was interested in observing that and and hoping for some mentorship. Had, had you sort of intellectualized it to that degree at that time?
00:47:53
Speaker
Yes. You had, and what did you find? What were your notes? What was in your, what was in your journal? the guy The guy was thought deeply about everything he did from the micro motion and movement around a Serac and which direction to take the the route of travel to the big picture, how to how to how to keep the the train going to make sure that the supplies all made it to the next place so that everyone was positioned.
00:48:24
Speaker
um a lot of the A lot of the deaths that season on K2 were, Al Rouse and Julie Tullis, they were pinned down by a storm unnecessarily by their own group because they weren't coordinated in terms of the the the package of stuff that needed to arrive.
00:48:44
Speaker
yeah George was was was brilliant at that. Yeah. When you're sitting around with your VC friends, do you tell them stories about like George and his decision? are like you know, how much of that kind of crosses over into those other conversations or does that live totally separate in your... For most of my career as a venture capitalist, my partners were pretty uncomfortable with the idea of talking about any of this stuff.
00:49:14
Speaker
Such a fringy thing. And I'm so actively doing it, you know, as a... Your VC partners or your climbing partners? My VC partners. Climbing partners, we talk about this stuff all the time.
00:49:27
Speaker
you know you know Slater, for instance, Rob Slater, was was was we did a lot of climbing before he went on his K2 expedition because he really wanted to know what it is that I learned and what could he take away from that. He was going for a fast and light Alpine-style expedition, but what could he you know what could he take from my experience? and What could I tell him that he he was a voracious, like you and me, he was a voracious reader of the literature and he was anxious to interview everybody who who had some experience on that mountain. But my partner my venture capital partners, my investors and my my partners at the time, they they thought it was kind of a fringy thing and they'd have a hard time explaining it to people what this stuff was about. So they actively discouraged any mention of the you know this kind of stuff.
00:50:15
Speaker
this this you know devotion to alpinism and to backcountry skiing. Is that changed? Yes. And what's the conversation now? Are they actively interested in it?
00:50:27
Speaker
Yes. Because you know there there was this, you know as as outdoor sports generally and backcountry skiing, guiding and rock climbing became democratized,
00:50:39
Speaker
and you had sort of it entered the popular imagination, it became much more an interesting thing for people to hear about the the the the risk management lessons that we learned from for mountain guiding and how those apply to venture
Guiding and Venture Capital: Parallels
00:50:54
Speaker
capital. And I started writing the blog about 10 years ago, talking about how being a mountain guide and being a venture capitalist were in many ways the same same job.
00:51:02
Speaker
and And some of those lessons that we learned from those two things, how do they how do they apply to each other? and walk and and and how how those are effective effective tools in your in your in your arsenal of of of things you do. So that became a more accepted and a more you know sort of sort of out in the open idea. But that's only pretty recently, Steve, I'd say since sort of 2010. And now with publishing this book, which is sort of a a book about mountain guiding and venture capital and the culture of Boulder Ventures, I would say we're completely out in the open now, yes?
00:51:40
Speaker
Right, right, right. Yeah, you're openly giving away your, quote unquote, secrets in a sense, right? Because that's how you, you know, we're going to get, I think that that's super interesting, but I want to get to that in a minute. We got to, you mentioned Rob Slater and, you know, everyone I talked to who interacted with Rob, you know, obviously he died on and,
00:52:08
Speaker
And it's so I never had they had the honor or the luck to meet him. But everyone I talked to who interacted with him just had these incredible stories about him and his energy and his climbing and his intellect and all of these things. like
00:52:25
Speaker
When you go through your VC life, do you meet Rob Slater's? Yeah. And how do you know? Like, what's a, ra like, like in in the name of Rob Slater, may he rest in peace. what What is that? What is that je sais quoi of being in that?
00:52:43
Speaker
Well, I mean, rob Rob, like all of us had had a bad gene. ah Yeah, he had it bad. He had it bad. He had a bad gene and he had to go rock climbing every day.
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah. But he also, he he had a desire to to do things at the cutting edge that I'd never really seen before. You know, he, he not, he would not, he was a fantastic free climber. One of the best of my generation.
00:53:11
Speaker
I mean, just, just as solid as any of the the best elite rock climbers were. um And he, he took that to the mountains occasionally because for him, ice climbing and mixed climbing was pretty trivial compared to the level of rock climbing he was interested in.
00:53:30
Speaker
Yeah. But he also, he also in rock climbing, was very interested in pushing the standard of ascending any piece of rock by any means necessary. and He was really the greatest aid climber of his generation. I mean, some of his roots on El Cap, Wyoming Sheep Ranch, and Sea of Dreams, there are pitches up there that still are unrepeated. and people just Or if they are repeated, it's because people have added lots of bolts to them.
00:53:58
Speaker
Yeah. yeah And Rob would just hook his way up El Cap for 30 meters on unknown terrain that nobody else would ever do. Right. Yeah. And if, and, and, and but so people can understand that a hook is like a, literally ah ah metal hook and you clip it.
00:54:18
Speaker
It's got a little sling on it and you clip a rope ladder to it called an aider or an atria. And then you, you, place it on top of an edge or a flake on a piece of rock. And, you know, a flake is sometimes they can break or kind of pry off or edges can be small. But the thing is like when you're doing that and you fall, there's no protection to stop your fall, to arrest your fall. So if you're doing this for 30 meters, you've just gone 30 meters and there's nothing to keep you from falling now. 60 meters plus rope stretch, which is a massive fall. And you have no idea if the little edges that you're hooking on are ever going to continue.
00:54:57
Speaker
Because sometimes they just stop, right? right It's like, ah it's who knows what happened? some The glacier came down Yosemite Valley, you know, two million years ago and it left some edges and some places are just polished as smooth as a sheet of glass and you don't really know. So to be up there just hooking his way into, like, towards some other crack system is incredibly bold.
00:55:22
Speaker
it's It's, I don't, people don't really... I mean, outside of maybe Alex Honnold, I mean, nobody really operates in that headspace anymore. Exactly. and And observing him and his risk management and his decision making was really interesting for me because that was not who I was. I felt the analogy is more Rob is more of an entrepreneur and I was more of a venture capitalist in our climate.
00:55:47
Speaker
He was really ready to hang his ass out in space. You know, go for the objective where I'm more circumspect and want to want to manage the risk at a higher level.
00:55:59
Speaker
The other thing is he's one of the first base jumpers in America, you know, jumping off the side of the cliff. And I climbed with him a bunch of times where we got to the top of the objective and he jumped off with a parachute, you know. That was a new idea then.
00:56:11
Speaker
Not so much now, but nobody knew what the equipment and the and the techniques and stuff, but he really, that was interesting to him. That was what he liked was was risk management at the absolute edge of elite human performance.
00:56:27
Speaker
Yeah, I will buy the the episode that's going to air before this one is actually with Randy Levitt. And so he was ba base number, I forget, like 50 or something like really early. He was right there. i didn't.
00:56:42
Speaker
Rob Slater did not come up in our conversation, but I know for a fact that those two did some base jumping together. I was to say, I bet they jumped together. A hundred percent. Right. A hundred percent. And they climbed in the Valley together. Yeah. They were there at the same time. They're the same age.
00:56:56
Speaker
So, um, you said a couple of things I want to try to follow up on. One was uh, ah You know, Rob was interested in the edge of performance or something to that effect. Like, how did you know that? What did what does that mean exactly? who He was interested in decision-making at the edge of elite human performance.
00:57:19
Speaker
Decision-making. Decision-making. Do I jump today or not? can i Can I stretch this this hook pitch all the way to the next crack system where no one's ever gone before?
00:57:34
Speaker
And you describe yourself as a sort of risk manager at the, at a higher level. Talk to me about the difference between someone who wants to make decisions at the edge of human performance or human achievement and someone who wants to part, like partake in the upside of some of that, ah what unfolds and what can be developed on top of that kind of exploratory mindset.
00:58:05
Speaker
Talk to me about the different... It's a different mentality. It's the mentality of the entrepreneur versus the mentality of the venture capitalist. rob was rob rob was Rob was trying to to push the the the margin as far as he could and was willing...
00:58:20
Speaker
to suffer the consequences as he did, dying on K2, pushing the margins of what he was capable of or what anybody was capable of in those. For me, durability and mastery and integrity were the things that I was trying to create in my business and in my in my guiding that that that enabled me to have a long view and a long life and a long ability. I didn't want to die on the north face K2 and I wasn't willing to to do what it probably would have taken to to push it to the top.
00:58:54
Speaker
You know, that was not in my nature. I know it sounds obvious to you when you say Rob was an entrepreneur and I'm a venture capitalist and what that means. But I don't think it's as obvious to me until you just explained it in that way. So then when you're standing at the, you know, at the onset of your career, I 85, 86, looking ahead, this maybe late Did you have that awareness at that time?
00:59:20
Speaker
Like it's a very different game plan to be, have that awareness and be like, am going to look for relationships. Integrity is important to me. I get to manage risk. I got to, I know I have to expose myself to some risks to make progress and gains, but i don't want to have too much. I don't want to lose everything.
00:59:41
Speaker
Did you have that awareness? Yes, Steve, early in my career as a venture capitalist, I was obsessed with the mastery. And there weren't very many of them out there. There weren't very many venture capitalists in the 80s who had already proven themselves to be masters of the form, had built funds from scratch. it was the first generation That was the first generation of American venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and from Boulder and from the East Coast.
01:00:04
Speaker
And they were accessible to me. As a young venture capitalist, I could go to Silicon Valley you know and call up Tommy Perkins or or or Paul Ferry in Boston or or you know um Tony Edmund at Venrock. And and i could i I could call them up and go have lunch and ask them questions about their deals and tell them what I was doing. And they were interested in you know and and what what we were doing in Boulder, Colorado. And and they were happy to do that.
01:00:29
Speaker
I don't think that's accessible to young venture capitalists anymore. I don't think that exists because it's such an institutionalized kind of business now. But in my generation, when I was 27, 28 years old, they were they were available to me. A lot of them like to go skiing. I mean, it's always been a thing in the venture capital business. They come out to Colorado to go skiing. So I had an opportunity to guide them, you know, powder skiing or skiing at Vail.
01:00:54
Speaker
um and and to interact with them and a in the field in a way that probably wasn't available to other venture capitalists. And of course, the young venture capitalists of my generation, there weren't that many, maybe a dozen of us, who had good jobs with name brands, Silicon Valley or Boston or New York funds.
01:01:12
Speaker
They all skied and and they would all come ski with me and we'd all have a great time together. So there was a a real camaraderie. though It wasn't a competitive environment at all. It was it was a real collegial thing.
01:01:24
Speaker
And could learn from each other and use each other's networks to to to to try to achieve mastery like the guys that we were emulating. So yes, I was very aware of that at an early age. And it's something I sought out. The same way I sought out the best rock climbers of my of each of my generations to see what I could learn from from observing them and interacting with them in you know in the Where did that humility come from that allowed you to see the wisdom of pursuing like these relationships with these, with these, you know, a team as as I think you said, you know, of but the Alex Lowe's of venture capital.
01:02:13
Speaker
Did that come from climbing because you'd already been through that with hot Henry barber and you know George Lowe III, and and you you knew that these giants of climbing were also human beings that needed a spot or a belay or a load carried?
01:02:31
Speaker
I had a lot of energy and a lot of intellectual curiosity, and I wasn't intimidated by the reputation, either in the venture capital world or in the climbing world, of these of these greats because frankly, as a rock climber, I, you know, I was a pretty good rock climber for my generation. I, you know, I was a solid 5'11 track climber. And so, you know, in those days in the seventies and eighties, that was, you know, a relatively elite level. I wasn't, I wasn't Alex Lowe or a Rob Slater, but I could climb with them.
01:03:02
Speaker
You know, I could play around with the golf with Arnold Palmer and not, and not, and not embarrass myself. Likewise, i could I could, you know, I had the chops to go, because I'd been trained by Mert McCure in Boulder, had the chops to go hang out with Tony Evden, who was the greatest biotech venture capitalist of his life and managed the Rockefeller's fund, or Paul Ferry, who was the greatest tech venture capitalist and and matrix partners in Boston, Tommy Perkins, who started Kleiner Perkins in Silicon Valley.
01:03:31
Speaker
I was not intimidated to call those guys up and tell them about a deal I had in Boulder. I would never go to visit them unless I had a deal to show them. I have an opportunity to show you. And that is just the currency of our profession. Yeah?
01:03:45
Speaker
Right. Likewise, I wouldn't but wouldn't call up Henry unless you know I wanted to go climbing. Right? Let's go climbing, Henry. Yeah. And the weather's good and you have a route you want to do. I have a route I want to do. I've never done this thing before and I'll hold the road for you on it if you want to you want to lead it because you've got dialed and I want to see how to do it properly.
01:04:05
Speaker
know Right? I think i think a lot of you know a lot of that was just intellectual curiosity on my part and and and not being intimidated by the reputation of these people. you know and And let's face it, in those days, in the 80s, the only reputation they had was amongst practitioners. As you said, nobody would know in the airport who these people were, right? Henry could go anywhere he wanted in the world. Nobody knew who he was except for rock climbers.
01:04:37
Speaker
You know, he was on ABC Wide World of Sports. That was like no one had ever seen anything like it. It's a great segment, too, that I've got on one of my blogs. And, you know, but he could still be completely anonymous outside of the rarefied atmosphere of of international rock climbing.
01:04:54
Speaker
um he you know Today, these young entrepreneurs, the guy who runs OpenAI i or the guy who's the the the CEO of of ah of a successful tech company, there in Silicon Valley, they're they're celebrities.
01:05:08
Speaker
You know, I mean, if Sam Altman shows up right now, I for sure know who he is. There's no question. I know what his voice sounds like. Well, he'd have an entourage of 30 people around him who are managing him and, you know, right.
01:05:20
Speaker
and And these young venture capitalists who are so successful in Silicon Valley, they're the same way. You know, they're all just obsessed with money and status and their own thing. And my generation of venture capitalists who learned and was fortunate to have been mentored by this group of foundational venture guys,
01:05:38
Speaker
inculcated their philosophy and their culture, which was, you know, what we're doing is nobody's business but our own. It's between us and our entrepreneurs and we're building these businesses. And that's not about status or or or the public information. There's no value to exposing to the public what we're doing here because it's so cutting edge and so wacky that that people just, you know,
01:06:03
Speaker
People poo-poo us. And the entrepreneurs were not Elon Musk. They weren't you know attention seekking attention-seeking, cutting-edge individuals.
01:06:15
Speaker
There was no attention to them at all. Well, they appeared on the Forbes 400 list as one of the richest guys in the world. you know It wasn't until Bill Gates and and Steve Jobs...
01:06:26
Speaker
who were sort of the prototypical founder, entrepreneur, billionaire guys. Who were the ones who kind of created that persona? It didn't exist until them. Nobody knew who Andy Grove was at at Intel, unless you were a venture capitalist.
01:06:43
Speaker
When did it become about money and status? a ae the bubble of the The tech bubble of what change the industry The money got bigger.
01:06:55
Speaker
Silicon Valley clearly outdistanced every other place as ah as a as the terrain the best terrain for this activity. um ah you know A generation of venture capitalists got got really rich.
01:07:09
Speaker
and And the press kind of it captured the imagination of people, the rise and fall of the internet bubble. And of course, the internet changed society and changed technology and changed the world.
01:07:23
Speaker
So there was a recognition, I think, that these ah that these wacky ideas and companies from Silicon Valley really had a major global impact. And that America is clearly the leader in the world in this stuff.
01:07:36
Speaker
A combination all that and the Bill Gates, built Steve Jobs kind of personality thing. I think that that changed the industry. That's when it became a you know a public thing. Much like I think the Free Solo movie kind of changed people's perception of of rock climbing. Now it became sort of a mainstream thing. Don't you think? Don't you think Free Solo was kind of a watershed moment for for rock climbing?
01:08:00
Speaker
100%. 100%. And nobody's ever asked me about this before. And I do have a lot of thoughts about this, you know, but um I don't think we have enough time for all of that.
01:08:10
Speaker
But let's, let's pick that up another time or another date. Cause I think you're absolutely, absolutely right. And again, it's like, you know, it's, it's not to judge as better than, or it's, it's worse now, or I don't know any of that.
01:08:28
Speaker
What I, but, What I'm curious about, and I don't think in climbing it's about money and fame because obviously climbing roots doesn't scale the way, like, i don't know, the next best browser or the next LLM is going to, it's just not even, not even the same. We're not on the same sheet paper. So, so let me get this straight. So the, the bubble happened.
01:08:51
Speaker
I mean, ah the bubble burst too. So that's why I'm a little, where I'm a little confused because of course a lot of people got paper rich on the way up, but then the bubble burst and they got paper, became paper poor, but it came it became about money and status, at least in society's mind.
01:09:11
Speaker
It captured everyone's imagination. It was front page news. why Why? what i um i almost want to say what I want to ask is what went wrong. Like, but you know, because you're, you're, you're not a person and we haven't even gotten area AMJ directorship and that stuff, but you, you're not a person who has been out there for money and status.
01:09:38
Speaker
Correct. Or fame. Like, I know that because we've known each other for a very long time and we've s skied together and we've climbed together and we've had lots of conversations. We've sipped whiskey together and had lots of conversations. So,
01:09:50
Speaker
And that's, I think, that's the that's i think the the heart of it, right? Like, I mean, and, you know, when I talk to people like you or I talked to Greg Penner a few ah weeks ago, like, it's the same it's the same message. Like, he's also, like, he he also, like, had I don't think he'd ever done a podcast. He's the chairman of the board of Walmart. He'd never been on a podcast before.
01:10:13
Speaker
So interesting, right? Like, compared to, I don't know, people going on, you know, Joe Rogan every chance they get and, you doing five hour episodes, which is also interesting. Like part of me loves the transparency and I, and I do get sucked down the rabbit hole of hearing these wild kind of trains of thought that some of these minds go down. It's, it is sort of fascinating from sort of a But I still want to understand where and why it became about money and fame or money and status status. I'm I'm yeah sorry. I was yeah I don't think venture capitalists even to this day are famous.
01:10:54
Speaker
But in Silicon Valley, it's about status and relevance. They all have lots of money now, you know, so it's really about status. And where are you?
01:11:04
Speaker
and And that's a ah human, you know, human characteristic, this kind of within the context of elite human performance and elite human capital, people are competing with each other to be to see who's the best.
01:11:16
Speaker
right But what you described from like the beginning of your career, you described like a, ah you know, collaborative environment.
01:11:28
Speaker
And now it's you're describing a competitive environment. Yes. How do we get back to collaboration or do we? There's no going back. There's no going back.
01:11:39
Speaker
Why? It's too big and too important. And these centers of venture capital like Silicon Valley and Boston are too well organized. Too many people trying to trying to climb their way up the pyramid.
01:11:53
Speaker
We'll never see the 80s in rock climbing or in venture capital again. That was a moment in time. And i'm I'm really grateful now in my life to have experienced it. 100%, yeah.
01:12:07
Speaker
Are you a little sad and melancholic? Nope. No? Have you ever seen the... the the Netflix documentary about Jimmy Iovine and Ray and their partnership. Yeah. Yeah.
01:12:22
Speaker
Great. I've seen it a couple of times. Fascinating. and And Jimmy Iovine, who I've met is, is fantastic entrepreneur. You know, one of the, one of inventors of the music business really music business.
01:12:34
Speaker
And Dre says, they're they're asking him about his gangster rap days, you know, and all the all the violence and stuff that went on down, you know, in the gangster rap. And Dre looks at the interviewer and says, you know, what's behind me does not matter.
01:12:47
Speaker
I'm only interested in the future. And i I completely embrace that. That's the mindset of a venture capitalist and a mountain guy.
Future-Focused Mindset and Relationships
01:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, I'm happy for all the things that I've done.
01:12:59
Speaker
But what matters is the future. How can I use all the all the information that I've got, all the good decision-making and bad decision-making I've done that informs my my efforts? How can I use those to to to maximize my opportunities in the future?
01:13:18
Speaker
What is it that you um learn or pick up over your years as working in VC that that accumulates, you said good decisions, bad decision, and how does it accumulate and how do you recognize it? And how does that how does that show up and future in the future?
01:13:42
Speaker
Well, it's it's immediately evident, experienced venture capitalists, you can immediately detect their mastery from the quality of the companies and the management teams that they field.
01:13:55
Speaker
you can just see, I can see when I i read a you know a funding announcement from someone I respect about a new company that they've put money into and what's going on there. And I look at the list of the individuals involved, and but this is mostly in the biotech business where people tend to be more experienced than they are in tech in their careers.
01:14:14
Speaker
And i can I can see the targets, I can see the the academic history of the thing, I can read the papers, I can see who the venture capitalists are, I can see the management team, it's like,
01:14:27
Speaker
death That's a pro effort. No guarantee of success, but with a little luck and timing and wind at their back, that's gonna be a a very successful company.
01:14:38
Speaker
We talked about the analogy of you know a powder day to you know success in business. And you just brought it up again, like the wind at the back.
01:14:50
Speaker
we How do you know when you're too early? Well, being early in the venture business is a common mistake and it's exactly the same as being wrong. So the result is the same.
01:15:03
Speaker
so so So you know you how you're wrong in retrospect, right? Once it's gone up in flames. Okay. No questions about that. But but how do you know you're too early?
01:15:15
Speaker
Well, it's obvious. It doesn't work. There's no product market could fit. you our that You can't make the drug. The drug works, but you can't make it. Or you know no one's willing to... even even yeah I've had the experience of having developed a drug company with experience management. The drug works, and the FDA yeah doesn't understand how a drug like that can work and turns it down. you know Says no, because we were too early. No one had a genetic medicine for heart disease before ARCA.
01:15:43
Speaker
And now, 20 years later, they're all genetic medicines. You know, so there's lots of ways, there's a million ways to fail as a venture capitalist. And it's only in retrospect that you, that you have, you know, that you have to the, that you gain the wisdom and the perspective and try to do better the next time. And it's the same, I think, in mountain guiding, you know, you want to try to cover the same terrain over and over and over again to become expert at it, to avoid those mistakes. And that's really the value you bring to a client is, is knowing how not to fail.
01:16:15
Speaker
Hmm.
01:16:19
Speaker
I want to talk, ah I want to hear from you a little bit about, you know, and la carte, your choice. Can you, can you take me through a story of a, of a company? You talk about a number, a couple of them in your book, but can you take me through sort of a life cycle story? could be a success or, you know, like the one I mentioned in the intro, or it could be one I don't know about and just talk to me, talk me through how that went down and how that works.
01:16:50
Speaker
here Particularly as like what you were just talking about, that that putting together board, the management, the the idea, the academic backing.
01:17:07
Speaker
want to understand that's an alchemy of sorts. sleep what' goes What's in that potion in ah in a real world example? Well, let me let me contrast two of them that are in the book because it's often the case that, that you know, you in our in in our model at Boulder Ventures, it's always about the serial entrepreneur. we we We're focused on our relationship with that entrepreneur and what we can do together.
01:17:38
Speaker
It's not as if we pick a fast growing market and we assemble the team and point them with our hose full of money and try to and try to light it on fire. So you said serial entrepreneurs, so you don't fund people that it's their first company?
01:17:53
Speaker
No. Okay. And we're fortunate because we have this long history with Merck at Colorado Venture Management, the predecessor fund, and now 30 years with Boulder Ventures, we have this large and devoted following in Boulder of of of entrepreneurs who've come up being mentored by other entrepreneurs through these successful companies. And we have this this group that we can depend on to to to develop new ideas and who are subject matter experts.
01:18:20
Speaker
That's a big advantage for a venture capital fund. we are not We are not, you know what Combinator is in Silicon Valley. We're not Y Combinator.
01:18:32
Speaker
We're not investing in noobs. No noobs around here. They're all very experienced entrepreneurs. And and we have exceptional confidence in our authentic relationship with those individuals and their capabilities. And so that takes a lot of the management risk off the table.
01:18:49
Speaker
Okay? So really what we're we're we're focused on are are you know big markets in the future that we see coming. And can we point our entrepreneur and our money and our capabilities and this team at that problem?
01:19:04
Speaker
Because the product itself is going to change and and maneuver over time. It's not not about funding a product for us. It's about you know a large market opportunity and an experience CEO and and the people around him, they they always come with a team um that can that can together make something really interesting there.
01:19:26
Speaker
a So in, you know, small business, people talk about the pipeline of from the people discovering you to the people who are buying from you. And it sounds like you've sort of built your your product in a way as a company that's going to become successful in the ways you described.
01:19:44
Speaker
And you built this pipeline. Because you have these people just cycling, like, do this company for 10 years, then they're going to go do another one with another person, and they're in your pipeline, and they're just coming through.
01:19:59
Speaker
One of the great advantages to doing this in Boulder is that none of the people we invest in here, Steve, none of these entrepreneurs, have any ambition to sell their company and go somewhere else.
01:20:13
Speaker
This isn't the end for them. They live here. This is their lives. We've raised our families here. We're committed to this community. we all We all are, at some level, elite human athletes. and And that's a big part of why we're here.
01:20:29
Speaker
you know We're all skiing and climbing and biking and running together. so So you know unlike Silicon Valley, where you know a lot of the time, the goal is make a lot of money on my deal and retire to Jackson.
01:20:42
Speaker
spend the rest of my life having fun.
01:20:46
Speaker
That's a different mentality. I'm not going to i'm not goingnna criticize that, but it's a different mentality than mentality in Boulder where we're committed to each other over our lives to to work on the future.
01:20:58
Speaker
And we're not going anywhere. And if we're successful in the future, great. And if we're not, we're still going to do lots of climbing and skiing.
01:21:07
Speaker
You know, I think that you picked up an interesting point where the I'm going to sell my company and retire somewhere that suits my fancy. That's more of like a ah gambler mentality, like you get a. I'm just going for the big payout.
01:21:24
Speaker
like And that's that's the goal. And then to do nothing afterwards. And what you're talking about, and you keep using this word mastery as well, which ties into this, where you're talking about just iterating and just doing reps.
01:21:37
Speaker
And you're not going anywhere because it doesn't get any better than where you are now. And you love what you're doing and you're continually getting better at it. This is one of the things I love about running my little small businesses because I'm, I'm so, I have so much growth and I can continue to get better at this for so long. Whereas I can't, my, my window to get better as an athlete ended already a long time ago, 15 years ago. Right.
01:22:03
Speaker
And that's just age, but you guys are just committed to the process and are just there. And that's ah fundamentally different thing than the, I don't, maybe don't like this term gambler mentality. That's not the right term, but this, I'm going to win big and cash out and go like sail around in my yacht or whatever.
01:22:24
Speaker
You're like, yeah, you're just going to stay in Boulder. You're going to go climbing with your friends. You're going to, you know, out for dinner and downtown and some new great restaurants that just opened up and like, you're going to wake up and do it again tomorrow and next week. And then week after that, that's what I love. Like, that's like when you talk to people like yourself and, and you know,
01:22:47
Speaker
A lot of the people I've interviewed in this series, that's exactly how they're wired. And I find maybe I need to find someone who's wired the other way and try to understand that perspective. I don't think it would be very interesting.
01:23:01
Speaker
You know, Greg Penner goes into that office and and in Bentonville, Arkansas every day and tries to get better at the biggest business in the world. Isn't that an interesting problem?
01:23:14
Speaker
Super interesting guy. yeah you know To think about things at that scale and how to be better at them. Super fascinating. yeah Yeah. And so much room for error and and such big consequences if you get you know for so many people, like the responsibility. Mind-blowing what the the the resources and the risks that that guy deals with on a daily basis.
01:23:38
Speaker
Incredible, right? It was a great conversation. I was i was enthralled by it. Well, thank you. He's a great conversationalist and a super interesting guy. And a great owner of the Broncos, too, by the way.
01:23:51
Speaker
So, you know, clearly that guy has some capabilities outside of just the boardroom that are relevant. Well, we're recording October 13th, and there was a really good football game, like, I think it was Sunday night, just recently, where they yeah they pulled it out.
01:24:08
Speaker
they They pulled it out and beat, and Bo Nix looks like a great new quarterback, so. Yeah, that was that was incredible. i was I was watching that, and I haven't watched a football game in years, and then I heard that was on. I was like, oh, I wonder. you know I just talked to Greg, and Greg was in my mind, so I tuned in, and man, what a finish.
01:24:25
Speaker
Anyway, so... One thing I heard is that early on, you were able to get in touch with these because it was such a small world and you're not intimidated by people and you're just able to call people up and they're coming out to Colorado. They're going skiing or taking them up the Vail. Oh, by the way, I have this powder skiing operation and I could take you out the Vail backcountry and we can ski, have some of the best turns of your life.
01:24:51
Speaker
And that's ostensibly not possible. ah business not about business, but it's absolutely about ah relationship. I mean, we've shared some great powder days and we know what that, and and not just with each other, but with other people. And we know what that bond is like at the end of the day, after everybody's just been on cloud, literally on cloud nine for the whole day.
01:25:16
Speaker
How does that, how does that, I find that very brave, Kyle. I got to say, like, I find that very personally, I find that very hard to do. To like, to do, like it's, there's a lot of bridges in between that first phone call and that powder day.
01:25:37
Speaker
There's a lot of little connections and points of contact and cause I i I know this about you and it's certainly true about me. I don't go powder skiing with just anybody. And and like it's somebody I know, somebody I trust, somebody I care about, somebody who could dig me out if the if the snow starts, you know, slides and ends up on top of me.
01:25:59
Speaker
There's a lot of qualifications that have to come in, into a lot of boxes that have to get checked before I go powder skiing with somebody. I find that very brave and very impressive that you can pull that off. And tell me how, like, did you did you see that whole path from the beginning or did it organically unfold? You're like. Yeah, I brought a guiding mentality to it and and and throughout the venture capital, but everybody in the venture business, everybody in the venture business knows that I'm a mountain guy.
01:26:30
Speaker
because they've all come skiing with me in Vail in the wintertime. And that's a place where venture capitalists come to ski in the winter. and And if they go to Zermatt or they go to Chamonix, they call me and say, who should I ski with? And I connect them with, you know, a mountain guide in those places who are also lifetime friends of mine.
01:26:46
Speaker
I was always the venture capital guy who was a mountain guide. And so people would go skiing with me. So I deliberately leveraged that expertise and that reputation to foster these authentic relationships with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and investors in my fund together in a setting. I mean, the the Snowcat operation, Veil Pounder Guides on Veil Pass that Ben and Jenna Bartos own, that that's the that's the ideal setting for those kinds of conversations.
01:27:16
Speaker
And this will be our 20th year of operations up there on Veil Pass this year. really proud of though those guys, Ben and Jenna and the the business they've built. And we've used it effectively in our business to develop these authentic relationships at Boulder Ventures. You can see it in the book. There's lots of pictures of happy venture capitalists and entrepreneurs and investors all all enjoying powder skiing with Lefkopf on Vail Paths.
01:27:43
Speaker
Talk to me about the bridge between that relationship that is forged there at Voil Path and the relationship that is forged when you call them and say, hey, i've got ah I'm putting together a deal that you might be interested in.
01:27:57
Speaker
What's the connection or is it just seamless? Once you've developed those authentic relationships over a long period of time through progression with risk that that have resulted in you know something different,
01:28:09
Speaker
something more than just a casual business professional relationship. These are, you know, these are, these are authentic relationships, which I describe in my blog as a as, as a special, your goal as an entrepreneur, your goal as a venture capitalist, your goal as a mountain guide is to, is to foster those and to collect those relationships because you, know you rely on them in your business and you rely on them in your guidance.
01:28:34
Speaker
um And, and, That's what is meaningful in life to me. That's where I get joy in my in my in in my work. And and that's that's what you rely on to be successful in both your guiding and and and in business. Okay, so let me ask it this way. Have you been powder skiing with somebody and then after that been like, I'm never working with that guy in the VC world? Absolutely.
01:28:59
Speaker
Why? What happened? They won't, but you know, they're unguidable. You've experienced this, haven't you, in your own guiding? Oh, yeah. Meet these people, they're just unguidable, you know?
01:29:10
Speaker
You say carefully, I'm going to ski the left line, don't go right am ah don't go left to my track, that's dangerous terrain, I'm the left fence here, and I'm going to stop down here at the bottom, and the guy just, you know, off all over the place, right?
01:29:26
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, what did what did you hear me say? And what he heard me say was, wah, wah, wah, powder, you know? Guy's unguidable. Well, the same thing is true in business.
01:29:37
Speaker
You meet entrepreneurs that are unguidable and you you know, that's fine. That's somebody else's deal to do, not me.
01:29:46
Speaker
Okay. What about the middle case? Have you done deals with people and then, or or worked in companies with people, I should say, and then on the second or third or fifth or 10th year or second or third iteration, like that You find out about a side of them that makes them, as you say, unguideable or ah unworkable.
01:30:12
Speaker
and And were there warning signs? It is a frequent experience that you're disappointed over time in in your authentic relationship with somebody.
01:30:26
Speaker
that's That's common. It's also in both guiding and in in business. And it's often also the experience that that the capability of the entrepreneur in a startup is not matched by his capability once a thing has achieved product market fit and the flywheel's going it's taken off. And a guy from zero to $10 million dollars in revenue is often not the same guy who takes it from 10 to 100, right?
01:30:51
Speaker
right so You just have to be attuned as a venture capitalist, as and a mountain guy to what are what are the strengths and weaknesses of your of your authentic relationship? And, you know, where do you take it? And how do you communicate when, you know, you the individual's reached his highest level? We can just stay there and be happy.
01:31:12
Speaker
But if you push forward, you're going to yourself at risk That's my judgment. I could be wrong. You know, one of the things that I think is interesting, and maybe I have a very simplistic view of how the VC world works, I've never been involved in it in any way, shape, or form.
Optimism and Legacy
01:31:30
Speaker
But you raise a fund, you have X dollars, and you go to invest those dollars. And, you know, you invest, say, in 10 companies. And I don't know,
01:31:41
Speaker
two of them do well and eight of them evaporate. And those two have to cover the returns of, of the other eight that went away. Is that you sophisticated view of the venture capital business? oh Yeah. Real sophisticated. So, so this, so as you said, like this disappointment happens often and you, despite all the reps that you've done, despite this incredible pipeline that you've built and these These long-term relationships you've established with countless individuals and you've skied with them and you've closed deals with them and you've run companies and you've appointed boards and you've sat on their boards and and you still are sometimes disappointed. How does that happen?
01:32:24
Speaker
It's astonishing how wrong I can be about the future. And what are you wrong about? I mean, okay, the future, but what is what is the detail? detail what what's what Wrong about what? Wrong about whether it was too early or too late or the right time?
01:32:38
Speaker
was too early or too late or was too competitive. And there were many other people after the same thing were, I just, I was wrong about our luck and we were unlucky in the thing we tried to do.
01:32:55
Speaker
was wrong about the individual and he was at a stage in his life that, that, that wasn't going to be as prosperous and and productive for him as, as it was before. Um,
01:33:07
Speaker
can but it how can I be so wrong about the future? And I am frequently wrong about the future because I'm living in the future. I'm trying to visualize what the future looks like.
01:33:19
Speaker
And I have a ah good map of that. I've been at it a long time. So I have a, you know, I've been right more than I've been wrong. So I have a a clear view of what I think the future looks like. And the same thing's true and in skiing.
01:33:31
Speaker
I've seen this powder day on veil pass a hundred times. And it looks fantastic. Benny, we're going, this is going to be unbelievable. And we're going out to the top of machine gun first. And get out there and bulletproof. proof Come on, how did that happen? Well, there's some random wind came up and buffed out the top and blew it all away and never seen that, but that happens, right?
01:33:56
Speaker
You've been in that situation many times before too, where you absolutely had it dialed and knew what was coming and then completely unexpected. I was wrong about the future.
01:34:08
Speaker
Do we, as humans, and maybe there's different levels to this, and you've talked about the entrepreneurial and the VC, are we by nature too optimistic?
01:34:24
Speaker
No, it's a feature of entrepreneurs and and climbers that they're optimistic. You can't be a pessimist and be a doubter.
01:34:35
Speaker
you know be a doubter either in yourself or in the objective and and and be successful as an entrepreneur or as a climber. They're by nature optimists.
01:34:46
Speaker
And the optimists win the optimists win. That's one of the lessons of venture capitalists. The optimists win. They may not win today. They may not win tomorrow, but they will win in the future. Why? hummors The doomerous are always wrong because human nature is is infinitely different.
01:35:02
Speaker
Scalable. human Elite human capital is infinitely scalable. Never bet against elite human capital. America is the center of the world of elite human capital.
01:35:14
Speaker
Never bet against America because that's where all the smart people who want to live in the future come.
01:35:22
Speaker
And if they want to come and climb and ski, they're coming to Boulder, Colorado.
01:35:29
Speaker
And if they're in biotech, they're going to ski with the climate.
01:35:36
Speaker
No, i I agree with everything you say. And I think it's also everyone else in the world is sort of puzzling, trying to figure out what is like, what I talked, asked you earlier, whether it was Florence and the Renaissance or or Silicon Valley today like or poor Boulder, what are these, what are these magic ingredients? How much of the magic ingredients, what proportion of the magic ingredients, and I know there are probably many and probably some we don't understand or know about, but how much of that is actually the availability of capital, venture capital specifically, that you can, if you have a good idea, in most cases, you can find someone to, and you and you have a plan and say, hey, I need $10 million. dollars
01:36:26
Speaker
to get this off the ground and I think it's going to work and we're going to, you know, and have a projection and you have a good plan that, that somebody will write you a check for $10 million dollars or at least eight or what, know, maybe I'm oversimplifying, but how much of it is that?
01:36:40
Speaker
Well, there's no question that the capital markets in America from the very small, you know, Angel Network and the local town that funds the guy with his idea to the to the public stock markets and debt markets that can aggregate hundreds of billions of dollars instantly to point it. There's no question that that's an important feature.
01:37:05
Speaker
But it's not it's not where the causal era starts. yeah it's you know We're not a great center of entrepreneurship in Boulder because because there's tons of money here pointing at these entrepreneurs. We're a great center of venture capital in Boulder because of the elite human capital that draws the money in and and makes it and points it at the future and makes it successful. Kyle Lethkoff of 1975 knows...
01:37:31
Speaker
knows If Kyle Lefkoff of 1975 were to know everything that Kyle Lefkoff of 2025 right now today knows, what would he do different?
01:37:43
Speaker
I don't think I would. I don't think I would have. I think I had it. i think I got it. when The first summer I came to Boulder. that I've tried to describe to you how profound that impact was me coming from the place I came from.
01:37:58
Speaker
a You know, I, I think I got, I, it had such a dramatic impact on my psyche and on my, on my desire and a place to point my energy for business and for climbing, you know,
01:38:13
Speaker
it And that place you came from is Atlanta, Jordan. It's Judaism. It's, you know, you're investssor at in upstate New York, at the Gunks, University of Chicago.
01:38:27
Speaker
i mean, and then, of course, the road all the places the road took you along the way. and and and and that all brought you to that point.
01:38:39
Speaker
I think that this is one of the... for younger people and even for older people, especially those that are ambitious are looking for that like sign, you know, that, that, that confirmation and to be able to look back,
01:38:55
Speaker
you know, their lives, you know, have already 50 years later and and be like, yep, that was the right right thing. so I don't know if that's a common human experience, but for me, it was. For me, it was the epiphany.
01:39:08
Speaker
this was This was my place where matters. and And I could develop both of these skill sets, my human capital and my human athletic potential in the same place and and express that in both both arenas.
01:39:25
Speaker
and be allowed to, or be even encouraged to express that intensity, that curiosity, that, that, that who you are, all of who you are. so that's, that's pretty, that's pretty, pretty amazing. um Well, I'm, I, for one, I'm super glad that, that you were able to find that Kyle. I think you're a pretty amazing guy and you've been an incredible friend and mentor to me. I don't know if you realize, how much of an impact you've had on not just myself, but a lot of people in the guiding and climbing community who have come into contact with you and you, you know, you've brought this other perspective, this other experience, you know, of, of, of your professional career and shared it with us in the levels of the American mountain guide association or the
01:40:18
Speaker
ai or in all these ways. And i found it fascinating. and I've learned so much from you. I've just from, like you said, watching you operate and take people climbing and pour people really good glasses of wine and all the other other things that that you've you've done.
01:40:37
Speaker
One final question. What is the legacy of Kyle Lefkopf? Like you've written this book, as you said, it's like kind of the legacy of Boulder Ventures in a way. Maybe it's even the the blueprint as you see it. You guys are in, I think your eighth fund now. We're we're going to raise the ninth fund this year. so Oh, okay. So yeah, I mean, congratulations. It's huge.
01:41:02
Speaker
what's How do you want to be remembered? i think that I think now i'm it's a good question what I'm thinking about. for obvious reasons at this stage of my career.
01:41:14
Speaker
But I think I want to be remembered for building bridges. that that That was really where all this all this effort and all this energy and all this training and iteration led me to.
01:41:26
Speaker
Building bridges between between clients and mountain guides. Building bridges between guides in their career and their ability to become successful professionals. Building bridges between entrepreneurs and investors. And acting is the essential glue that that creates the opportunity for both.
01:41:44
Speaker
um We just, this week, built a bridge in El Dorado Canyon across to the base of the West Ridge. And um we're going to dedicate it on Thursday.
01:41:55
Speaker
You ever walked across to the base of the West Ridge, across the the river there? Yeah, yeah, sure. We built a bridge to to the base of the West Ridge. um I'm really proud of those. And and those those are the hardest things to do, building those bridges.
01:42:10
Speaker
But they're also the most rewarding. They take a lot of time and effort and experience. there's always There's always doubters and naysayers who don't want the bridge to be built.
01:42:21
Speaker
And you have to overcome those obstacles and be single-mindedly focused on the objective with a group of people. But when you succeed at it, the results are the results are really satisfying.
01:42:35
Speaker
I love your perspective on the optimist always winning. I so hope you're right in every possible way. So thank you for this incredible conversation, Kyle. You've shared so much with the community. i just so much gratitude. So thank you for coming on tonight. And thank you for doing this one podcast. I had to twist your arm just a little bit. Maybe your wife was involved. Maybe I i have to. Steve, I've never done this before I'll never do it again. So I'm really grateful to you for for having made that ah a painless exercise. I really enjoyed it.
01:43:08
Speaker
Well, I hope you do it again. So I'm sure I'm not alone in that. So thanks, you Kyle, for your incredible contributions. And we will be in touch. Thank you.
01:43:32
Speaker
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01:43:49
Speaker
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01:44:00
Speaker
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