Beer with an Entrepreneur #8 — Daniel Petre, founder of AirTree Ventures

Daniel Petre is one of the most successful Australian venture capitalists ever. Having returned hundreds of millions of dollars to investors, the former Microsoft executive — and Bill Gates lieutenant — is now on his third VC journey; this time with AirTree Ventures.

In this episode of Beer with an Entrepreneur, Daniel talks about being terrified of Bill Gates, his mental models for evaluating companies and ideas — and how personal tragedy made him re-architect his life.

The two also dig into Kerry Packer’s (in 1997 Daniel Petre started investment arm Ecorp for Kerry Packer’s PBL with $30 million in ­capital, floating the subsidiary six years later for $385 million) go-to-strategy when faced with failure, why founders must continuously expose themselves to criticism (and strengthen and improve based on it) — and why he considers himself be to of “average intellect” and “just lucky”.

Want more of Daniel Petre? Have a look at his Twitter, blog on Medium and AirTree Ventures main site.

Beer with an Entrepreneur is proudly supported by Hahn SuperDry.