“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
All my life I have waited for my life to start. I have no more schools to get into, no more analyst programs to do. As of right now, it all counts. I've always had goals that were within my grasp to achieve – yes, from time to time I've failed, but I never felt like I couldn't succeed given another chance. And, as long as I had graduate school ahead of me, I always had another chance. Now, though, HBS is over, done. When does life start? For me, it starts now that I no longer feel like I've got unlimited lives left to spend.
After school, I've taken a job in London. Professionally, my goals are difficult but simple. I want to build the best venture capital firm in Europe; I want to look back 10 years from now and point to companies that I helped build that employ thousands of people; I want to make as much money for my investors as they could possibly want.
Personally, my goals are much more important and harder to achieve. I want to start a family. Meeting a wife is harder than investing in companies because you just can't make it happen. As much I want to share my life with someone, she has to want to share it with me.
I've never really tried for the things that matter because I've always been afraid. I cannot control everything, and I've never faced the unknowable well. The biggest lesson I've learned at HBS is that in order truly to succeed, I have to take at least some unknowable risks. I want to have the courage to articulate what I want, and then to try and get it – even though no matter how many times I try, it may just be beyond my control.
After school, I've taken a job in London. Professionally, my goals are difficult but simple. I want to build the best venture capital firm in Europe; I want to look back 10 years from now and point to companies that I helped build that employ thousands of people; I want to make as much money for my investors as they could possibly want.
Personally, my goals are much more important and harder to achieve. I want to start a family. Meeting a wife is harder than investing in companies because you just can't make it happen. As much I want to share my life with someone, she has to want to share it with me.
I've never really tried for the things that matter because I've always been afraid. I cannot control everything, and I've never faced the unknowable well. The biggest lesson I've learned at HBS is that in order truly to succeed, I have to take at least some unknowable risks. I want to have the courage to articulate what I want, and then to try and get it – even though no matter how many times I try, it may just be beyond my control.
— Alex Rogers