fter graduating from Ox- ford University, Mike Brown worked in his

grandfather’s firm — Odlum Brown — before opening the doors of his own business along with two other men in 1968. Here, Brown reflects on his work with Ventures West, now the larg- est company of its kind in Canada.

What kind of companies does Ventures West invest in? “We are not (usually) investors in things where you can identify the market today. By and large we're in- vestors in things where we don’t know there’s a market place because the thing is so new no- one has figured out they want it yet.... It's a very risky business, because quite frequently you make a wrong guess. You can guess wrong about the market, you can guess wrong about the technology, you can guess wrong about the people, and unless al! three of those things you have a superstar equivalent of, you lose.”

How often do you make the right decision? ‘We win about 30 per cent of the time. Twenty-five or 30 per cent of the time we lose every nickel we put into the businesses. The rest of it just kind of exists, but it’s extremely boring and never goe: anywhere and at the end of the day you're lucky to get out with your money.”

How involved is Ventures West in

PARTCPACHION DB.

27 - Sundays, January 28, 1990 - North Shore News

AFFLUENCE gs INFLUENCE

VENTURE CAPITALIST MIKE BROWN:

IN HIS OWN WO

the management of its com- panies? “\hen things start to look bad, we know there’s only one solution. Either we don’t write any more cheques, or else if you're going to write more che- ques, you bloody well better get in there and understand what's going on and try to fix it. Since you know that from the beginning, you know that you might as well start spending time with the companies right from the outset.’’

What kind of lessons have you learned along the way? “So many that you'd think ! wouldn't keep making mistakes, but the fact of the matter is | keep on figuring out new ways to make mistakes ....What have | learned most along the way? Oh, | think the most im- portant lesson is how important the people are. That's absolutely the most critical issue .... if you don’t have a good management team, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of it is. ve seen really good things blown because you have bad managers.”’

What would you most like to change about yourself? ‘That's dead simpie. To be more aware of people and of their problems and concerns and feelings.... | really

have to work hard at it. 1 think there are a lot of penple to whom it comes much more naturally, but ! just have to work really really hard at it, and | think | do a lousy job by and large.

Do you consider yourself a hard-nosed businessman? ‘‘I don’t think I'm hard-nosed, al- though | know a lot of businesspeople who [ think are. 1 just prefer to try and sleep at night rather than be hard-nosed. Every once in a while you have to make decisions, though, that are very unpleasant, | mean, they're really nat nice. And the hardest deci- sions of all are where you have to go to somebody and say ‘1 just don’t think you're suited for this job’ ... That's very hard.”

On Globe ‘90: ‘I think that it’s kind of neat that maybe Van- couver gets known to be the focal point for this kind of issue. The object is to have this bi-annual- ly...In my view the industrial op- portunities that would evolve from that are significant.””

“The more people that talk about this and try to understand what we all have to do, the more likely it is we all do it.”

NEWS photo Neil Lucente

Mike Brown, partner in the largest venture capital firm in Canada, started his career in the offices of Odlum Brown.

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