How Persistence and Generosity Built a $9B Firm One Cold Call at a Time w/ Mitchell Green, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Lead Edge Capital

**Mitchell Green** (0:04)
I look for founders that have grit, came from nothing. It's EQ, it's sales skills, it's persistence. That's the stuff that matters. People that are hustlers, dogged, are very responsive. People that respond back to emails or texts really quickly, people that are always on, people that show gratitude, founders who have chips on their shoulder, who want to prove the world wrong.

**Ian Hathaway** (0:31)
Welcome to another episode of Outsider Inc. I'm your host, Ian Hathaway. Today's guest is Mitchell Green, co-founder and managing partner of Lead Edge Capital, a growth equity firm managing roughly $9 billion, and one of the most unconventional investors of his generation. Mitchell's story doesn't start in a boardroom. It starts in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A father running a generations old family manufacturing company, and a kid juggling three paper routes by sixth grade. At 18, he was working the factory floor of the family business, an experience that gave him a respect for ordinary work, and a perspective on how hard most people's jobs really are. He skied his way into Williams College, dropped out to start a company, failed completely, and begged his way back in.
Then, he found the seat that changed everything. Bessemer Venture Partners, where he became one of the first two cold callers, the first firm ever hired. Two years, tens of thousands of voicemails and emails, and one essential education. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, Mitchell did something almost nobody would.
He bought investments out of a struggling hedge fund, passed the hat among Williams' trustees, classmates' parents, and CEOs he'd once cold called, and started doing deals on his own. One of his early LPs finally told him to raise a real fund. So in 2011, he did. $52 million, anchored by a now-legendary investment in Alibaba that most people thought was crazy.
15 years later, Lead Edge looks like nothing else in the industry. A rigid set of eight criteria that filters 9,000 companies a year down to a handful of deals. A willingness to buy into great companies any way possible. Leading rounds, buying LPs out of decades-old funds, outright buyouts of profitable bootstrap software businesses that the coastal venture world ignores. And the engine underneath it all? More than 800 operator and executive LPs who don't just write checks. They open doors.
The founder's Mitchell backs look a lot like he once did. Gritty, persistent, underdogs with chips on their shoulders, people who respond to every email, never stop pushing, and want to prove the world wrong. He doesn't care where they're building or what pedigree they carry. And today, only about 10% of the portfolio sits in the Bay Area, and more than half the time, Lead Edge is the first institutional money in. Mitchell was underestimated at nearly every turn, and then built a firm whose entire model is finding the companies and the people most others overlook.
In this episode, I want to explore what he sees at the rest of the market misses.
Mitchell, welcome to Outsider Inc.

**Mitchell Green** (3:13)
Sir, thanks for having me in.

**Ian Hathaway** (3:15)
It's good to see you again. Thanks for being here. The conventional wisdom in venture is that all the best deals come from certain kinds of networks, certain geographies, certain product categories, certain founder pedigrees. You built a $9 billion firm, almost ignoring that entirely.
Finding durable companies before they're obvious, usually outside the Valley.
One of the core ideas of this show is that some of the most enduring companies get built by people and in places the market overlooks at first. Your own story fits that pattern as much as any guest you've had. So, I'd like to start with something philosophical. When everyone's chasing the obvious and the glamorous, what lets you look at a blind spot and instead see an opportunity?

**Mitchell Green** (4:06)
So I was like a nationally ranked ski racer growing up, and I'm not afraid of taking risks. And I've never been part of the cool crowd, or I've definitely never been referred to as cool in my life. Definitely not by my children and definitely not in school. And I believe you got to look under rocks to find diamonds. But I should have done some of the obvious things like SpaceX is probably only going to cost us not investing there at $30 billion, $50 billion, $100 billion, $200 billion, probably cost us only a billion dollars personally. Sometimes you can be very wrong, even when the crowd is right.

**Ian Hathaway** (4:37)
Okay, let's rewind all the way. You grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Your father ran a generations old family manufacturing company, and you were entrepreneurial early. Three paper routes by sixth grade, your mother helped out, and at 18, you went to work on the factory floor of the family business.