‘Put Yourself in the Right Place at the Right Time’ and Other Career Lessons

Koichiro “Koh” Nakamura, MBA ’07, is a cofounder and managing director of Sozo Ventures, a global venture-capital firm that has invested in startups including Coinbase, Palantir, and Zoom, creating new industries worth more than $100 billion. He has appeared five times on the Midas List, Forbes’s annual ranking of the top 100 global venture capitalists. Nakamura pivoted to venture capital after Booth. Before that, he spent many years at Mitsubishi and was a founding member of the Yahoo Japan team.

“Right place, right time—to me as a venture capitalist, this means becoming an expert in the new industries and technologies that I think are going to expand. That way, I’m ready to move when the time is right for an investment. I can then leverage my skill set and my personal genius to be a strong partner.

“The year I graduated from Booth, everybody was looking for investment banking or consulting jobs. Those were the safe, high-paying jobs. Very few people went into venture capital, because they didn’t want all that risk. But a risky place is sometimes the best place to be.

“I cofounded Sozo Ventures in 2010 with Phil Wickham, shortly after Lehman Brothers crashed. Most people thought this was a terrible time to launch a fund, but it was the right time and place for us. It was a pivotal year for global expansion by some big companies. Our first investment—supporting Twitter’s worldwide growth—was a financial success and a pioneering story of globalization. It launched my career in VC.

“Phil, who has been my mentor as well, gave me a lot of guidance when I was starting out in venture capital, but his lessons on the importance of being in the right place at the right time were the most valuable. All of my success, as well as Sozo’s, comes down to that.”

—As told to Heather Lalley

Megan Grisolano, MBA ’15, is executive producer and senior director of content for Nashville PBS.

“After Booth, I was business-development manager at a St. Louis public television station. I’ve always been interested in media and production, but telling stories wasn’t something I thought I could pursue professionally—I hadn’t specialized in that. In undergrad, I’d studied economics, so I had a data-oriented background. I also majored in Spanish and studied in Madrid, where I met my Spanish husband.

“When we moved to Spain in 2018, I switched to part-time work and decided to make YouTube videos. My first videos were in English and targeted toward young women studying in Spain by featuring places to go and colloquial phrases. Then I realized that nobody from that demographic was watching—but Spaniards were. That’s when I decided to do Spanish-language videos.

“The premise was ‘An American in Spain.’ My ‘What do Americans think about Spain?’ video took off, with more than 1 million views. I have more than 97,000 subscribers and 26 million views. Now that I’m living back in the States, I’ve rebranded a bit to talk about the trivial but significant things that unite the two cultures. For instance, I conduct informal surveys with American friends and family and present my findings on camera. Interviews with my dad are always a big hit. One recent video with him included a rap about jamón ibérico that we shot during our trip to Spain last year.

“The experience was a big part of why I landed my current job, where I get to be creative while leaning into analytics. My MBA helps me be more data driven, but I guess I had the storytelling part in me all along.”

—As told to Deborah Lynn Blumberg