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Alumni Profile: J. William Gurley

Also See Newsletter Article on Gurley

Editor's note: please contact us to nominate other alumni for working world columns.

Current Position:
Venture Capitalist at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in San Francisco.

Prior Experience:
Four years as a sell-side equity analyst on Wall Street (C.S. First Boston, Deutsche Bank).

Your biggest professional challenge:
To be a great venture capitalist.

Your all-time favorite investment (so far):
It is early. Probably www.imx-exchange.com.

What you like about your job:
Opportunity to change the world. Great access to great people. Awesome amount of new information on a daily basis.

The essential skills for being a venture capitalist:
Great judge of people. Strong cheerleader and ability to motivate. Good vision. Strong understanding of economics.

How VC compares to working as a sell-side analyst:
Much closer to the ground. Real skin in the game.

As a popular writer on investments, have you felt the pressure to get things right?
More so as a VC than as a sell-side analyst or commentator . An analyst needs to be more confident and convincing than right. The real value in sell-side analyst is in challenging your client's thought process -- not picking stocks.

Ever felt like slipping Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and other CEO's the wrong leads, just for fun?
Never. Great relationships with key individuals are precious.

Advice for business students:
Read everything you can get your hands on, and learn from all the best. Develop a mental model on how the world works. Then look for reasons why the world will change, and the conventional wisdom will be proven wrong.

Advice for investors:
Exact same.

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