The Generalist - Modern Meditations: Ann Miura-Ko

Friends,

I’m excited to share another edition of Modern Meditations, a series where we ask the most interesting people in tech non-obvious questions. Our mission is to elicit new insights that provide a clearer picture of the subject and what makes them tick.

We first kicked off the series this summer and heard from many of you that you appreciated the chance to get to know these people from a different angle. We’re excited to keep them going!

This time around, we’re featuring Ann Miura-Ko, co-founder and GP of Floodgate. I had the chance to get to know Ann earlier this year and was struck by her thoughtfulness, originality, commitment to the craft of venture capital, and wide-ranging technological expertise. During her career, she has backed some of the most valuable companies of the past decade, supported incredible founders, and mentored future generations of builders and investors. Her work has resulted in multiple Midas List commendations.

To hear Ann’s meditations on religion, Beethoven, and investing legend David Swensen, jump in.

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Modern Meditations: Ann Miura-Ko

Actionable insights

If you only have a few minutes to spare, here's what investors, operators, and founders should know about Ann Miura-Ko’s meditations.

• America is vulnerable to cyber warfare. Geopolitical conflicts don’t always play out on the battlefield. Increasingly, war is fought digitally, making cybersecurity essential. During her Ph.D. in Computer Security, Ann Miura-Ko saw this threat develop and suggests that the U.S. is vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
• The legacy of David Swensen. A legend in the investing world, Swensen served as Chief Investment Officer of Yale’s endowment. He was also a mentor to Ann, who learned from his astuteness, originality, and decency.
• Mastering knowledge management. Over twenty-four years of education, Ann has developed an obsession with knowledge management. She’s experimented with different note-taking techniques, tools, and styles. Today, she’s settled on using Mem.ai and hand-written notes.
• Dissecting decisions. The job of a venture capitalist can be distilled down to a series of decisions. To improve her craft, Ann tries to be as explicit as possible about the decision being made, its rationale, and its eventual impact.
• An age of economic power struggles. Our era will be defined by the U.S.’s competition with China and the changing nature of conflict. Specifically, Ann believes we are shifting from border-based to economically-driven clashes. As warfare changes, so do the stakeholders. Companies are increasingly becoming major players.

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Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founder and General Partner at Floodgate, a premier early-stage venture firm. Ann has invested in companies like Lyft, Refinery29, Studio.com, Emotive, and Starkware in that role. She has been named on The Midas List, a commendation highlighting venture capital’s best investors.

Here are her meditations.

1. What would you be doing if you didn’t work in tech?

Teaching. Probably math, physics, or computer science. When I did my Ph.D. in Computer Security, I realized that I liked the research but loved the teaching. Breaking topics into their fundamental, ingestible components and imparting them to others feels very rewarding, and I know I’m good at it.

While I currently teach undergraduates at Stanford, I also enjoy teaching younger kids. The way the school curriculum is built, it’s hard to impart a love of complex topics to kids, and they can totally sense it. But, even the most basic topics can be so interesting. Why do we have the number zero, and why is it so important? What actually are negative numbers? When you can take the time to explore topics with deep intent, it can be rewarding for teachers and kids.

As our world gets more complex with technology doing more and more of the everyday work, we need to impart more curiosity to our kids. Getting them excited about the process of learning is even more important than what is being learned.

2. Which current or historical figure has most impacted your thinking?

That’s easy: David Swensen. He led Yale’s Endowment for 36 years and was a mentor of mine. Not only did he influence my professional life, but he impacted how I think about things.

First of all, he was such an original thinker. When he arrived at Yale, as this young guy from Wall Street, no one saw endowments as anything more than a pool of money. David invented portfolio management and invested in illiquid and risky asset classes like venture capital which are higher beta but led to transformational returns over many decades. Those insights and many others changed how institutions oversee their money. Many of today’s endowments and foundations operate according to the Swensen philosophy.

Beyond his incredible professional accomplishments, I was even more influenced by the person he was.

David was an influential mentor to people from different backgrounds. He cared about diversity long before it was popular to care. David was always mentoring women and minorities because he believed it was the right thing to do and because he derived great joy from it. This started in his office with the people who worked with him and extended to the managers of funds he entrusted the endowment to.

Finally, David demonstrated it was possible to be professionally successful and a dedicated parent. A friend told one such story at his memorial. David coached his son’s Little League team for years and with incredible gusto. One day there was a Wall Street Journal article on David and the Yale endowment. A parent showed this article to a young seven-year-old teammate. The kid burst into tears and said, “Does this mean Coach Dave got another job?”

In a meme

​​​​For the pictorially inclined, here's the whole piece — all 2,500 words of it — in a single meme.

Puzzler

​​​All guesses are welcome and clues are given to anyone that would like one. Just respond to this email for a hint. Tolkien fans may notice that today’s riddle sounds familiar…

The answer? Your shadow. There you have it!

Wishing all of you a lovely rest of the week and see you soon.
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Until next time,

Mario