Meet The Billionaire Investor Who Owns The Land Where Jurassic Park Was Filmed

Forbes

Walter Kortschak, who made his fortune from 40 years of technology bets, opens up about his investing failures and triumphs—and why it’s dangerous to get swept up in AI’s “mass hysteria.”  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2024/09/15/meet-the-billionaire-investor-who-owns-the-land-where-jurassic-park-was-filmed/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes meet the billionaire investor who owns the land where Jurassic Park was filmed

00:07Billionaire venture capitalist Walter Kortschak is confident in his formula. He told Forbes quote

00:14Investing is about duration and persistence

00:16I don't know a lot of folks in our industry who have done very early stage

00:20Growth equity and private equity and done it well for this long

00:25consistently

00:27the 65 year old longtime investor owns homes in Aspen, Colorado and London plus a nearly

00:333,000 acre plot on the island of Kauai

00:37He purchased most of his Hawaii land where Jurassic Park was filmed and just down the street from Mark Zuckerberg's property in 2003

00:46Kortschak's assets are now worth an estimated 1.6 billion dollars

00:50Thanks to his tenure at growth equity firm summit partners and later

00:55Personal early-stage investments that paid off big

00:59Born in Canada to an Austrian father and an American mother Kortschak had an international childhood

01:05Raised largely in Geneva Switzerland where his father worked at the Swiss outpost of chemical manufacturer DuPont

01:13Kortschak first wanted to be a software engineer and earned two degrees in the discipline a

01:18Bachelor's from Oregon State and a master's from Caltech

01:21Then he joined a computer graphics startup in 1982 that later became MSC software a couple years later

01:29He returned to business school at UCLA where he was one of two quote venture fellows in

01:351985

01:37Through the fellowship which places students in summer roles at VC firms

01:41Kortschak interned at cross-point venture partners in early seed stage firm

01:46He joined cross-point full-time in 1986 a difficult time to break into venture capital

01:53He says there were quote probably eight

01:56associate positions across the entire industry that year

02:00Kortschak left cross-point and joined summit partners in 1989 to focus on later stage investing

02:07profitable growth stage companies mainly in the tech sector

02:10At that time summit was a five-year-old four hundred million dollar in assets under management firm

02:17He was charged with opening the Boston based outfits West Coast office

02:21One of his first major investments was in security company McAfee in 1991

02:26Which went public just a year later with a 9x return for summit

02:32During his two-decade tenure at summit Kortschak made a name for himself

02:36Landing on Forbes's Midas list of the world's best venture capital investors from 2005 through 2009

02:43He was involved in many of summits technology bets and buyouts

02:47including computer optics company etech dynamics which resulted in a 40x return and

02:53Networking company is Ilan which resulted in a 127 X return

02:59He left his active role at summit in 2010 when the firm had surpassed five billion dollars in assets and

03:05Became an advisor a position. He still holds today

03:09Armed with decades of experience and cash distributions

03:12He decided to go solo and return to early stage investing through his personal vehicles fire streak ventures and Kortschak investments

03:21Through fire streak ventures. He invests in early stage machine learning infrastructure and developer facing companies

03:28Through Kortschak investments. He invests in growth stage companies in software healthcare fintech and clean energy

03:36Kortschak was an early investor in several now public companies including the trade desk lift

03:43Palantir Robin Hood and Twitter

03:46Kortschak is also making AI bets with stakes in open AI and anthropic among other companies

03:53He says his investing career has indeed come full circle from early stage to growth equity and now back to early stage

04:01Although this time around the types of companies are different

04:04When asked about his investment advice the conversation turns to the sector many are focused on today AI

04:12Kortschak says quote. My personal advice is to be selective

04:16Invest in outlier founders and be disciplined in the number of investments you're making and the capital you're deploying to manage risk exposure

04:26For full coverage and to see our entire Q&A with Kortschak check out Phoebe Lewis piece on Forbes.com

04:34This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes

04:37Thanks for tuning in

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