Trash your CV

The problem with the CV is that it only shows what you did and this may be the least interesting thing about you.

Neither does it show who you could be, nor does it show who you want to be.

But who you could be is much more important than who you are.

And who you want to be is much more important than who you could be.

Who you are is static. Who you want to be is dynamic.

Remember, success is dynamic.

Sometimes you need to take bold actions to succeed at who you want to be. Especially, when people look at you and turn you down. They turn you down for all the reasons you do not qualify. Sadly, they tell you things you already know but you hoped that your other arguments would outweigh the things you don’t have.

Let’s look at an example, which should encourage you to be whoever you want to be. Imagining every job ad I have seen for jobs at VC firms contradicts the view of a very successful venture capitalist named Fred Wilson. The following is what he said being asked by Dan Primack about how to get into venture capital.

Dan Primack: “Is that still a viable career path for a 24, 25 year old: “I am intentionally gonna go to business school, get out, get into venture capital”. Or do you now really have to work at a startup or found a company?”

Fred Wilson: “I think you can do it. And I don’t even think you need to go to business school to do it. I think, if you really feel like this is what you want to do with your life, you can start making investments either for another venture firm. There’s even programs like…Josh Kopelman’s firm First Round has something called the Dorm Room Fund. There’s college students who literally have some money from First Round and they run around and make investments. And if somebody in that group demonstrated an unbelievable feel for it, then they could do a whole career. Jim Cramer from TheStreet.com was discovered as a stock picker when he was at Harvard. He had a voice mail system that you would call to leave a message and Jim would be “my tip of the day is XYZ”. So some Harvard Professors found out about it and started giving him money to invest for them. If you’re really talented, you could do it at 20.”

This happened at the Upfront Summit last week. In case you missed it, there is much more to discover in this insightful interview (25 min):

By the way, Fred Wilson writes a superb daily blog.

Given that being a venture capitalist is very hard, I think you could draw some parallel conclusions about what this might entail for other hard things.

So trash your CV and ask yourself: Who Do I Want To Be?