Replay: "Your Board Can Make or Break the Company" | Curtis Feeny (Episode 17)

Today's episode explores three ideas that caught my attention:

1. The university endowment mindset shift - Transition from the for-profit real estate world to Stanford's endowment revealed how different time horizons (centuries vs quarters) fundamentally change decision-making. 
2. Weak markets force better habits - Launching a career in Oklahoma during the energy crash of the 80s and jumping into Silicon Valley post-internet-bubble taught Curtis that downturns force rigor and prevent the development of bad habits. A counterintuitive advantage in the face of a “tough” market. 
3. Advisory board seats are earned - The Khan Academy progression from “informal advisor” to board member showed how the best board seats develop organically through proven value. The “give first” mentality seems to pay off. 

Curtis brings rare perspective from helping grow Stanford University's endowment from $1.5B to $10.5B, serving on over 35 corporate boards (including CBRE, Staples, Khan Academy, and more) and spending two decades as a venture investor at Voyager Capital. His unique journey from real estate operations to endowment management to venture capital provides him with an uncommonly broad view of how companies succeed and fail across multiple market cycles. 

During our conversation, Curtis shares: 

• Insights on the evolution of university endowment investing, including cautionary tales of concentration risk from NYU and Emory's experiences.
• Clear warnings about premature scaling, demonstrated through the story of Verari, a high-performance computing data center startup that reached $100M in revenue & raised growth capital at exactly the wrong time.
• Perspectives on emerging opportunities in nuclear power, cybersecurity, and deglobalization that suggest where future innovation may be needed. 
  
  

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Curtis’ Bookshelf:
• Crossing the Chasm | Geoffrey Moore
• This is How They Tell Me the World Ends | Nicole Perlroth
• The End of the World is Just the Beginning | Peter Zeihan
• Nuclear War | Annie Jacobsen
• Zero to One | Peter Thiel
• The Hard Thing about Hard Things | Ben Horowitz

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All opinions are personal and may not reflect the views of The Diligent Observer. Not investment advice.