Positive Change Through Collaboration

Positive change is created through collaboration – people working together with a shared desire to make the changes they'd like to see. When it comes to the startup ecosystem, founders, investors and customers all have a stake. We're all invested, we're all part of decision making, we're all responsible for making the choices that support our core values.

We can't expect a legal structure or instrument to truly capture or protect our core values. It's up to us to ensure incentives are aligned from idea to translation into the real world. The impact of the work we engage in reaches far beyond the companies we represent and any personal interests in them.

By staying true to our core values and attending to the desired long-term outcome of our investments, we arm ourselves to navigate the expected and unexpected challenges in getting there. The Mensarius oath is an example of an instrument intended to uphold ethical standards in investing, analogous to the oath physicians have been committing to for centuries in caring for patients. I support this code of conduct, which begins: "I vow to invest with integrity, ensuring my actions benefit humanity..." By openly committing to shared values, we help hold each other accountable to the changes we want to see.

My commitment is to go after the changes I want to see, especially the ideas that don't just happen automatically, that require an 'inner fire' to come to be. Individually we're here briefly, collectively we can be here for a long time to come. Let's make the most of the time we get, and help create the world in which we ourselves would like to be born.