The benefit of interviewing exceptional people is that I get to borrow parts and pieces of those conversations and institutionalize them in future work. Interviewing Bob Morse of Oak Hill Capital Partners made me realize the multiplying effect of that benefit. Cases in point:
I. Case in point: Increasing vocabulary. Each of the four people who read my column and recognize my efforts to wax prophetic and compress too many fancy words into each sentence will be particularly disappointed to learn my conversation with Bob Morse serves as inspiration for new vocabulary. Bob is a veritable smorgasbord of awesome vocabulary. Speaking from a global macroeconomic view, he asks how digital infrastructure will advance technologies that benefit the human condition. He speaks of ‘vectors’ and ‘transparency’ and ‘emerging economies.’ Bob’s perspective is a result of aggregated experience quite foreign to the majority. He’s built businesses in lands I have not yet heard of. He contrasts the nuances of running businesses in multiple foreign countries. He was in tech before tech was cool, rode Dot1.0 through to the bitter bottom, and not only rode the Phoenix back up but scootched himself up on the neck, hopscotched the 2008 depression and, with the ViaWest acquisition, pioneered the second generation of private equity (PE) data center investment into Dot2.0.