A Former Facebook VP Thinks Investing in Humans Is the Future of VC
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kb9mg/a-former-facebook-vp-thinks-investing-in-humans-is-the-future-of-vc
For decades now, Sam Lessin has been ruminating on an idea: What if instead of investing in companies, you could invest in people? What if Lessin could apply the venture capital model to human beings, allowing talented young thinkers to exchange traditional debt for freedom?
When he first tried as a young man to create a company based around this idea near the turn of the century, he admits, the world was not ready for such a proposal. “People thought I was complete loony,” Lessin told Motherboard over Zoom. So in the intervening years, he worked at Bain and Company and co-founded two tech startups, one of which was acquired by Facebook in 2010, after which Lessin became vice-president of product management at Mark Zuckerberg’s tech giant, and then a venture capitalist.