Go Chase Everything
A Profile of Marcus Stroud
Although Marcus Stroud is a decade younger, I am always struck by the blessing he is to me as a friend and role model. The phrases “force of nature” and “change the world” feel small when describing Marcus’s power and intensity. He uses the words “disciplined” and “passionate” to describe himself without ego, and I feel the energy of his discipline and passion more intensely than the words can convey.
I notice Marcus carrying (consciously or unconsciously) a weighty responsibility to show both those of similar and very different backgrounds what a young Black man can be. And I hear him testify freely on the challenges he has overcome and continues to conquer. Marcus doesn’t describe himself as a role model, but each time I’ve heard him share his young life’s highs and lows, I notice that all listening are inspired.
Along with Brandon Allen (a future profile in my series Celebrating Black Founders and Investors), Marcus is a founder of TXV Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm in Austin and San Francisco. A graduate of Princeton, where he played football, Marcus previously worked at Clubhouse Investment Group and Vida Capital.
It makes sense that Marcus Stroud feels older than his 27 years.
“You’re 14, you’re looking out at your cars being taken away, your furniture being taken away, your little brothers are teary-eyed, your mom is calling your aunt saying ‘I have five dollars to my name.’ . . . you’re realizing that’s not enough money for food for the four of you.
“That was the night I told myself, it’s time to buck up, and it’s time to go chase everything that life has for you. You can use this night to be emotional and reflect on the fact that you’re homeless, or you can use that as motivation and you can go be the best football player that you can, and you can go be the best student that you can, because at this point you don’t really have a cushion to fall back on. That was the most impactful night in my life, because that was the night I truly became a man.
“I decided that I’m going to work as hard as I can to not only do well for myself, but for my mom and brothers . . . [and] every other young kid, Black, white, brown or whoever goes through that situation. . . . Everybody experiences the harsh realities of life at some point. They lose the shield of their parents or whatever has held them from the junk that life can really bring . . . I lost the comfort of that shield at the age of 14.”
Just a short time before that defining night, Marcus’s mother and stepfather had hosted Barack Obama in their home. Marcus said, “Barack Obama was the first big role model in my life. He was everything that I wanted to be: a good man, an intelligent man, a faithful, married man.” But the excitement of meeting then-Senator Obama was followed by pain: Marcus felt a cold shift in some of his peers at school, and the N-word was written on a note left in his family’s mailbox. He reflected, “I had a privilege that a lot of African Americans probably wouldn’t have in a predominantly white town. I had a lot of really, really good-hearted white people who supported me. But I did experience that type of racism a couple times when I was young.” And then, Marcus’s stepfather lost everything he had in the 2008 financial crisis — and following a painful divorce left 14-year-old Marcus, his two brothers, and their mother homeless. The family ultimately moved in with Marcus’s aunt — six people sharing a small one-bedroom apartment.
Marcus remembers watching the episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when Will asks why his absent father does not want a relationship with him. Marcus’s biological father, for whom he was named, was a professional football player who has never played a role in Marcus’s life.
“I never get emotional with TV or movies, but I remember that night in my room crying because I know how that feels . . . my dad was never in my life, and I grew up hearing all these stories about a guy playing in the NFL, and I was wondering: ‘Why did you never care about your namesake? How cool would it have been for him to teach me all the things he learned when he played college football and in the NFL’ . . . he could have taught me some of those things. That episode was tough.”
Despite the absence of his father and departure of his stepfather, Marcus was blessed to have hands-on role models (whom he calls “guardian angels”) show up in his life. The few Black residents of his hometown, Prosper, Texas, included famous athletes Torii Hunter, Deion Sanders, Mario Edwards, LaTroy Hawkins, and Omar Stoutmire. These men “were present and taught their sons to be men,” and the challenges of Marcus’s life resonated with their own childhood challenges. This group stepped in to support Marcus, with Torii Hunter ultimately taking him in as his own.
Young Marcus knew he was built differently from those who enjoyed carefree childhoods. “I never cared about the good times, having fun . . . I cared about changing the world, maybe not the entire world, but I can change my world and the world of the people around me by just being disciplined.” This burning ambition to grow, achieve, and contribute shined through early in strong academic, athletic, and extracurricular achievement.
In high school mock trial and as a volunteer “teen attorney” in Collin County, Texas, 16-year-old Marcus saw a clear vision of what success looked like. “I started to realize I loved to wear a suit because when I looked at myself in the mirror with a tie and jacket on, I felt like ‘this is what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t know if it’s an attorney, but when I walk into the courtroom with a suit and tie people respect me and look at me and tell me I have a presence. I want that feeling as a man, when I have a family, whether that’s in the courtroom or the boardroom.’”
Teenage Marcus internalized the lesson that “you can’t wear what you want to wear, can’t talk how you want to talk, there’s an art to abide by because you do not have the privilege yet to be a Black man who can freely express himself.” Marcus described the uniform of his youth as preppy polos and jeans or shorts — and realized the power of that suit he wore in mock trial. He did not feel the freedom to wear tank tops or Nike Air Jordans, reflecting “you can’t do that unless you want to be labeled”; instead, he wore the pressure to transcend his circumstance and leave no opportunity to be misunderstood by those who would expect an outcome different from what he knew his future held.
But despite these experiences, or perhaps because of them, Marcus developed an ability to build bridges. “I knew that I had the capacity, by kindness and grace and being a disciplined person, to change the hearts of people. . . . Seeing some of my friends who came from completely different backgrounds want to sit down and have a conversation with me about my experience being a young Black dude, that showed me that my heart had been uniquely situated to show empathy toward people who may be confused. . . . The world that I saw that I could change was bringing together people just through kindness, success, and love.”
Marcus’s mother recognized his drive to bridge people of different experiences and connect their common humanity. Part of Marcus’s “old soul” feel comes from his childhood exposure to her work at an old-school R&B radio station next door to one broadcasting soft rock. Marcus’s fondness growing up listening to early 2000s hip hop — T-Pain, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne — is paired with a love of the music of his mother’s career. The eclectic foundation of his life soundtrack mixes records spun by his mother on air — Luther Vandross and the Isley Brothers — with the genre of her neighboring broadcasters, which he taught me “is now affectionately known as Yacht Rock.”
Marcus also remembers feeling connected to the Bay Area, a harbinger of his later Silicon Valley engagement. “I was listening to some E-40, some Too Short. I learned what ‘hyphy’ was. We were big Stanford fans, so we went out to the Bay Area a lot.” But it was his mother’s love of an older generation of music that led to his family nickname: “One time my mom turned on ‘We Are the World,’ and said ‘I love this song, this is your theme song,’ and from that point on, Marcus ‘We Are the World’ Stroud was my nickname.”
Marcus’s success in high school, where his days often started at 4 or 5 a.m., opened up the opportunity to play football at Princeton. In his junior year there, Marcus had a dinner that crystallized where he wanted to wear the suits that had empowered him during his high school days. A dinner with a Princeton alumnus who was a Goldman Sachs banker focused Marcus’s attention on the world of finance: “The guy was handsome, rich, had a beautiful wife . . . pulled out his money clip with his name engraved . . . I remember it like it was yesterday . . . thinking ‘what is this life?’ He was a former football player also, and so the competitiveness that went through his eyes when he spoke about the trading floor in the eighties . . . I thought ‘I want that.’”
From Barack Obama to Torii Hunter and the other men who fathered him in Prosper, Texas, Marcus is reflective on the impact role models had on his journey. He expressed his recent joy at befriending another inspiration, Shaun Alexander of the Seattle Seahawks. And he gave a glimpse of his contrarian streak when he mentioned Elon Musk and Peter Thiel as key entrepreneur and investor inspirations.
Marcus holds up fellow Austin resident Robert F. Smith for modeling the path for Marcus to start his firm: “I want to tell him to his face, one day, you are a big reason why firms like ours exists . . . because sometimes people need to see something tangible for them to believe they can do it and for me, seeing Robert Smith do it made me believe I could be in private equity, in venture capital . . . 50 years ago we couldn’t drink from the same fountain as most people in this country, we couldn’t use the same bathroom, couldn’t go to the same restaurants and now today you have a guy who manages $70–80 billion in one of the most prolific businesses of the world, and he looks like me and he’s right down the street.”
Even in a short time, TXV Partners has already made an impact. Marcus has heard from people all over the world, from a young entrepreneur in Bolivia wanting to talk about incorporating faith in business, to an inmate in San Quentin State Prison encouraged by seeing a Black man in venture capital and seeking advice on starting a business when he’s released.
As Marcus said, “We have had the chance to affect and bring together people of so many different backgrounds in a way that few funds and few people can given the personality and goals our firm set.” Marcus and his partners believe “diversity isn’t just a couple of Black guys at a firm. Diversity isn’t just two white guys, a woman, and a token Black guy all from the same/similar institutions or careers. Diversity is so many different thoughts, so many different beliefs, so many different ages, so many different social classes. That’s diversity.” And he strongly believes in “having an empathic heart regardless of background: it puts down people’s guard, and makes them want to be a part of your story. I’m fortunate that so many people have wanted to be a part of my story. Because I’ve tried to be not just the smartest guy in the room, not always the funniest guy in the room, but tried to be the nicest guy in the room. That’s how I’ve seen the world I envision change so far.”
While Marcus envisions and inspires change for the future, he is grounded in gratitude for those who came before him. “I am the man I am and have the opportunities I have as a result of the love and sacrifices of my mother, and my grandparents, and my great-grandparents who were sharecroppers, and my great-great-grandparents who were slaves. I’m just a very fortunate guy to have grown up with the love I have, and I always want to make sure I pay homage to them in everything I do.”
I’m grateful to Marcus for allowing us to be a small part of his story. To follow the launch of my podcast and listen to my full conversation with Marcus, follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.
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