Investing in the Future of Technology

Text By Colleen Gundlach
Photo By Savage Frieze

Growing up in Norfolk, Winter Mead was an outdoors person with an interest in running, biking and skiing. Today he teaches entrepreneurs how to build valuable businesses from the ground up. His new book, “How to Raise a Venture Capital Fund: The Essential Guide on Fundraising and Understanding Limited Partners” is Mead’s most recent outreach to the investing community and is proving to be a valuable guide.  Published in January by Mead, it has already taken a spot on Amazon’s Best Sellers in Venture Capital list.

Mead didn’t grow up wanting to be in wealth management.  His childhood in Norfolk was very Norfolk. He helped on his family’s farm – haying and boiling maple sap into syrup. “I can’t tell you how many hay bales I threw in the barn loft,” he says. He performed in plays at Greenwood Theatre, went to concerts at Yale School of Music and swam at Tobey Pond and Doolittle Lake.  At ten years old, he made his first venture into the business world when he started his own business selling pumpkins in Norfolk, an undertaking that eventually became the topic of his college essay – one that landed him at Harvard, where he earned a degree in economics and government, and later on to Oxford University, where he obtained a Masters degree in management and innovation.

Eventually, Mead moved to San Francisco where he worked for technology companies that were backed by venture capitalists. “I liked that venture capital companies were ‘creating value,’ meaning that they were creating valuable businesses from scratch. I thought that if I were going to be an investor, that venture capital provided an opportunity to work in finance while helping businesses start and grow.”

In 2014, he joined a large venture capital firm that invested in venture capital-backed companies. He says it was this experience that taught him about venture “from inside a well-run and successful venture capital firm.”

Over the next decade, Mead began writing a series of essays for several magazines, including TechCrunch, Venture Capital Journal, The Information, CBInsights and Forbes. He eventually branched out to opening his own business, called Oper8r, which “helps build and grow venture capital firms by providing education, training and resources to emerging venture capitalists.”  In addition, he is currently teaching venture capital and entrepreneurship at Stanford University in California.  

With the world of technology a driving force in culture, Mead felt that technology development and the world of venture capital “remained obscure,” and he knew there was a need to educate people on how venture capital works, to enable more small, start-up companies to grow.  His book is Mead’s answer to this need.  He says his goal in writing this book is to bring more transparency to venture capital. “I believe having more people understand how venture capital works, and how venture capitalists raise money, will enable more entrants into venture capital, and that will drive more innovation by bringing more financing to early-stage companies in need of capital to start and grow.”

As for advice for people who are interested in investing in new companies, he says, “Venture capital is still a relatively obscure industry. For anyone looking to invest into this part of the financial markets, I would encourage them to learn more about the specific dynamics of this industry before investing. And of course, read my book!”