📚 30 Scott Belsky – Lessons Learned as a Founder, Investor, and Bestselling Author – Outlier Academy
Outliers with Daniel Scrivner: Explore the Greatest Innovators, Founders, and Investors
English - May 12, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutesEntrepreneurship Business Education Self-Improvement Homepage Download Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
“Great opportunities never have ‘great opportunity’ in the subject line.” – Scott Belsky
In this episode of Outliers, I’m talking with Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky). After starting his career at Goldman Sachs, he left to found Behance which he later sold to Adobe. He’s now the Chief Product Officer at Adobe as well as a Venture Partner at the world-renowned venture capital firm Benchmark. Scott was an early investor in Uber, Pinterest, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, and sweetgreen. And finally, he’s the best-selling author of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality and The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture.
Scott is a modern polymath. We explore his journey from entrepreneur to investor, how he approaches investing in early-stage technology companies, as well as the lessons he’s learned at Benchmark, Adobe, and Behance.
Chapters in this interview:
00:00:05 – Scott’s learnings from his start at Goldman Sachs
00:05:35 – On co-founding Behance, and attempting to manage the “most disorganized community on the planet”
00:09:15 – Tactics for entrepreneurs and their teams
00:13:26 – The transition from startup (Behance) to large company (Adobe)
00:16:29 – How the desire to buy an education led to Scott’s interest in investing
00:18:59 – Seeing an investment grow from Seed to IPO
00:22:47 – How design can move the needle for a business
00:28:21 – Scott’s foray into venture capital and finding his ideal role melding investing with company-building at Benchmark
00:34:04 – On writing Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle
00:39:11 – Startups avoiding the fate of the “one-hit wonder”
00:43:32 – Investment trends that Scott is focusing on
00:47:31 – Scott’s favorite failures
Show notes with links, quotes, and a transcript of the episode: https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/scott-belsky-outliers-show-notes
Sign up here for Outliers Weekly, our Sunday newsletter that highlights the latest episode, expands on important business and investing concepts, and contains the best of what we read each week.
Follow Outliers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/heyoutliers.
If you loved this episode, please share a quick review on Apple Podcasts.
“Great opportunities never have ‘great opportunity’ in the subject line.” – Scott Belsky
In this episode of Outliers, I’m talking with Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky). After starting his career at Goldman Sachs, he left to found Behance which he later sold to Adobe. He’s now the Chief Product Officer at Adobe as well as a Venture Partner at the world-renowned venture capital firm Benchmark. Scott was an early investor in Uber, Pinterest, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, and sweetgreen. And finally, he’s the best-selling author of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality and The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture.
Scott is a modern polymath. We explore his journey from entrepreneur to investor, how he approaches investing in early-stage technology companies, as well as the lessons he’s learned at Benchmark, Adobe, and Behance.
Chapters in this interview:
00:00:05 – Scott’s learnings from his start at Goldman Sachs
00:05:35 – On co-founding Behance, and attempting to manage the “most disorganized community on the planet”
00:09:15 – Tactics for entrepreneurs and their teams
00:13:26 – The transition from startup (Behance) to large company (Adobe)
00:16:29 – How the desire to buy an education led to Scott’s interest in investing
00:18:59 – Seeing an investment grow from Seed to IPO
00:22:47 – How design can move the needle for a business
00:28:21 – Scott’s foray into venture capital and finding his ideal role melding investing with company-building at Benchmark
00:34:04 – On writing Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle
00:39:11 – Startups avoiding the fate of the “one-hit wonder”
00:43:32 – Investment trends that Scott is focusing on
00:47:31 – Scott’s favorite failures
Show notes with links, quotes, and a transcript of the episode: https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/scott-belsky-outliers-show-notes
Sign up here for Outliers Weekly, our Sunday newsletter that highlights the latest episode, expands on important business and investing concepts, and contains the best of what we read each week.
Follow Outliers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/heyoutliers.
If you loved this episode, please share a quick review on Apple Podcasts.