 An empty car does not drive. And an empty lawn mower does not mow. I'll get to what that means in a second. This past month, I got to spend a wonderful month in Antigua Guatemala with my wife. And I was speaking at a conference there, and I met this very tall Spaniard. And he looked down at me, and we did our kind of normal networking introductions. And he said, hello, I am one. And I do this, and this, and this, and this. And I am happy. And then I did my whole spiel in graduate school. I work at the MIT Media Lab and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I stopped, and he goes, but are you happy? And he stared deep into my eyes. And I just kind of stopped, and I said, yes. Yes, I am. There are just certain people in the world that are bold enough to stare you in the eyes and look into your soul. And Jerry Colonna is one of those people. He was a venture capitalist for years. And then he had a moment where he decided, you know what? My tank is not full. I am not fulfilled. And so first he had to focus on himself, and then he took what he learned about himself. And from that journey of asking himself the toughest questions, and now he is traveling the world, writing and speaking to help other people do that for themselves. Please welcome Jerry. I told Mark that that was wonderful. I didn't expect that. And we were joking before about doing things unexpectedly. And if you see that photo, you'll know that I really can't stand shoes. I don't know where I'm going to keep my tea. Hi, selfie. No, just kidding. I was in Boulder yesterday, which is where I live. And I got in around 1.45 last night, so I'm a little tired. Here's a couple of things you should know about me. First is that I'm a Buddhist. And I may make reference to that. The second is that I'm from Brooklyn. Brooklyn in the house? Anybody? One, yeah. And so I will probably curse. And I've been warned that if I curse, it's going to screw up the, is that a curse? It's going to mess up the MIT YouTube channel. So I may not get the views that we want or whatever. But usually my response to, I may curse. Usually my response is, and if you don't like it, F-U. It goes better when I don't have to do the F, you know what I mean? So you can imagine. Something else I want to tell you. These are my grandparents. Dominic Ido came to the United States in the 1920s, early 1920s. He's an entrepreneur. He's a nice man in Brooklyn. The United States, if you recall, had been at war with Italy. People forget this. They brought his wife, Nicoletta. These are his children. That's my mom. She died in September. Four of his sons served in the United States Army. Two of them won the Purple Heart. One won the Purple Heart being injured as a medic on the fields in Italy. I am a proud grandson of immigrants. Those are some things to know about me. So as Mark says, I do tend to look people in the eye. I have a little bit of a reputation. And that reputation is that I kind of make people cry. And you're crying already. So here's the question for you. Thank you for that. How are you? No, really. How are you? How often do we blow past this question? We do this. Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? How, how are you? I'm driving the video people crazy right now. We actually don't take the time to check in. We actually don't take the time to care. Not about each other, not about ourselves. How are you? Those facing transitions might be excited, super excited. Yay! I'm graduating soon. Or you might be terrified. Feel that? She's like, I'm not going to look this guy in the eye. He's going to make me cry. No way. Or are you exhausted? Think about the pace of our lives. Think about the way in which we live our lives. Or are you perhaps lost? Lost by David Wagner. Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes ahead of you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here, and you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask it permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen, it answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying here, no two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. I'm going to tell you a story. There's an old Chinese story about a potter who spends his entire life perfecting the most exquisite glaze imaginable. And at the end of his life, deciding that his meaningful life is over, he walked into the kiln and disappears into the fire. The next day, the potter's assistants open up the kiln and take out the pots. And they're covered with the most exquisitely as imaginable. But the potter has disappeared. And that's the story. I hate this story. Is it a good story? Is it a bad story? The entrepreneurs get it. The entrepreneurs in the room will sit there and say, I get it. I will work ceaselessly, endlessly, because I'm going to build the next Airbnb, or I'm going to save people back home, or I'm going to create meaning and purpose. But it's not just the entrepreneurs in the room who get it. I'm looking at my fellow ex-investors and current investors. We get it. We get it. I want the most exquisitely as imaginable. I want my assistants to open up the kiln and take out a miraculous product. I'll tell you about my journey into the kiln. Some of you may know that I was an investor in the 1990s, back when you were not even born. No, just kidding. Early 2000s. There's a guy named Fred Wilson. You may have heard of him. He's an old friend of mine. He and I started a venture firm in the 1990s, 1996, called Flatiron Partners. One of our investees was a guy, Steve Kane. We invested in Gamesville in 1999, tagline of which was Wasting Your Time since 1996. Largest bingo site on the web. Made a lot of money with that guy. I was, as New York Magazine called me, a prince of New York. Fred and I, not true, by the way, Fred and I single-handedly revitalized the New York tech community. Bullshit, but that's OK. Felt good. One day, I flew from New York to California, had a board meeting, got on a plane, flew back to New York. You know what I'm talking about. Because I could do that. I was a prince. I was a master of the universe. I walked into the house, and my now 24-year-old daughter, Emma, was at the top of the stairs. I looked up at her, and I fainted. And before I went down, I heard her say, mommy, mommy, daddy's dead. Mommy, mommy, daddy's dead. She didn't understand about exquisite glazes, or her dad, a master of the universe. She just knew daddy died. I kind of ignored the signs and continued on my way. Mark, I'm going to tell that story. February 2, 2002, Flatiron is closed down. I'm in the midst of a depression, but I'm ignoring it. I walk out of an Olympic bid committee meeting, because I was running the Olympic bid effort for New York. I'm standing in front of the smoldering pile that is ground zero. And I want to jump in front of a subway train. Master of the universe, King of New York, all of the dreams, 38, hollow inside. I called my therapist who said, get in a cab, come out, and see me. And as I said to Mark before, it was either the lowest point in my life, or actually it was both, the lowest point in my life, and the beginning of my coming out. And if you will, learning to stand still. I love this slide. I'm in such good company. I went to see my therapist. And I said, I don't understand what's going on. And she said, what's it going to take? What's it going to take for you to recover your life? What's it going to take for you to slow down? And I said, Bill Gates. And she went, what? Nice Jewish lady from Long Island, what? And I admitted to myself that that was my goal, because then I would be safe. You know that feeling? Unassailable, impregnable. When I heard myself say these words, I said, what the F, sorry, what the F are you thinking? What are you doing with your life? And I started exploring. And I came across the Gnostic gospels, the Kool gospels, the revolutionary gospels. And I realized that if I did not bring forth what was in me, what was in me was going to destroy me. Who am I? What am I? Where does this intersection of who I am and what I do for a living meet to define who I am? And my experience in this meat bag, known as Jerry. Discovering what is in you is difficult. And my company, I came up with this formula years ago, practical skills. So I coach people, I coach entrepreneurs, I coach investors, I coach people, I help them be better leaders. You wanna know the secret? I get them in touch with being human, because better humans make better leaders. They all come in looking for practical skills. How the hell do I do my job? Or how do I have work-life balance? And I send them into this, radical self-inquiry. Radical, I'm gonna curse Mark, because no bullshit. Radical, because the process of self-deception, if I only have enough money, then I will feel safe. Right? Become skillfully and compassionately stripped away so that there's no mask anymore. That's putting it mildly. To really look deeply in the mirror is scary. I've been there. I am there. We are not trained to do this. Remember the words of Jesus? Pema Chodron, one of my Buddhist teachers says, the essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Would that all of our leaders, political and otherwise, were able to be without self-deception? To see ourselves as we truly are, mess and loveliness and gorgeousness and joy and happiness and sadness and all of it in one fell gorgeous meatbag known as you. To see and accept that and lead from that place and go forth from that place. Recently, we run these multi-day boot camps for entrepreneurs, co-founders and investors and we're gonna throw up a few quotes today from some of the folks who came to our most recent camp. And these are all things that they wrote on their Medium posts. So I'm allowed to quote from them. Jake wrote, the fear of not being a great investor has caused me to act like my image of a great investor rather than being entirely authentic to myself. I'm so afraid of failing as an investor that I'm gonna pretend to be someone I am not. Been there, done that, doesn't work. Been there, done that, doesn't work. My friend Brad Feld once said to me, early on in my career, stop measuring yourself against other people. Just be the investor that you were meant to be. When I ask myself about my purpose in becoming a VC, I have a crystal clear vision. But it doesn't track to my purpose. It's who I am. The process of inquiring within, I came to understand, requires us as the poet says to stand still. Slow down, but standing still is scary. Too often we conflate motion with meaning. You know how busy I am? I'm so busy that I can get on a plane and fly to California and fly back in a day. Superman, huh? Why? What are you doing? Why? Why are you walking into the fire? I don't care if you're walking into the fire. Enjoy walking into the fire. Know why you're walking into the fire. Are you doing it to run away from something? Are you doing it to make yourself safe? I've often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room. Because who do we encounter when we sit quietly in the room? Ourselves, maybe the scariest person around. But standing still, sitting quietly in your room, creates freedom. Victor Franco, great psychoanalyst from the mid 20th century who survived Auschwitz, asked the question, why did some give up? And why did some survive? Purpose and meaning that is deeply connected. How do we find that? Between stimulus and response, there is a space in that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. You wanna walk into the kiln? Be my guest. Choose it. Understand the consequences for your six-year-old daughter. Understand the consequences for your partner who may be putting their life on hold for your dream or the parts of yourselves that are denied as you build up other parts of yourselves. Choose. Don't let your unconscious choose for you. Standing still allows us to find our way. Fred, who was at our boot camp, wrote, it's not until I suffered that I started to be able to make some progress. And it's not until I realized how much I made others suffer, radical self-inquiry, that I was able to make some change. It's not until I started giving back that I found a deeper resilience inside of me. The key for me was not to ignore my dark aside but to lean into the discomfort. For the VCs, for the investors in the room, this, these are your peers. Dave Mao, for the first time in a long time, I am at peace. I know what I need to do. And more importantly, I know why I'm doing it. Everything else is just execution. When we stand still, when we sit quietly, we come to understand what a forest is saying to us. We come to understand who we are. And we bring forth that which will save us, heart, purpose, meaning, resiliency, a sense of connectedness to each other into something greater than the meatbag known as me. Disappear into the fire, be my guest, just come out of it. And then learn to sit quietly. Thank you. It's the first time I've done that talk and so I have five minutes extra, so I don't know. How's that for timing? You should have told me you were gonna be five minutes early, you know what I'm saying? I didn't, I never did this talk before. No, thank you so much, that was wonderful. Thank you. Wonderful chair, thank you. I'm gonna get my shoes. Another round of applause for Jerry, please. Thank you.