Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love by Bill Gurley

Bill Gurley has been a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark for ~25 years, and he led the Series A investment in Uber Technologies Inc. (NYSE: UBER) way back in 2011. In 2018, Gurley gave a talk to MBA students at the University of Texas about how to chase a dream job. Someone filmed it, put it on YouTube, and it has been circulating ever since. The book was born from that talk.

Gurley teamed up with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to survey 10,000 people. Nearly 6 in 10 said they would do things differently with their career if they had their time again, and more than 40% of those would choose a completely different occupation. His view is that most of us get put on what he calls the ‘career conveyor belt’ by parents and the education system, which pushes people towards a handful of ‘safe’ jobs, well before they have any idea what they actually enjoy doing. Gurley himself started out as a software engineer, got bored, went back to business school, worked as a Wall Street tech analyst and eventually landed in venture capital.

The book is built around six principles:

1. Chase your curiosity

2. Hone your craft

3. Develop mentors

4. Embrace your peers

5. Go where the action is

6. Always give back

Each principle is illustrated by a profile of someone whose career typifies it, with examples ranging from Danny Meyer, founder of Shake Shack Inc. (NYSE: SHAK), to Bob Dylan.

From an investing standpoint, the mentors chapter uses the example of a young Warren Buffett chasing Benjamin Graham all the way to Columbia University to study under him, and Gurley’s idea of having a ‘personal board of advisers’ rather than relying on a single mentor makes a lot of sense. A good read for anyone starting out in their career at a time when AI is reshaping what many of those careers will look like.

“The goal should be to find a job where hustle doesn’t feel like hustle.” – Bill Gurley

‍Link to Book

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