How Mike Jackson Became a Venture Capitalist

Mike majored in biology and earth systems at Stanford. After earning his bachelor’s degree, Mike elected to stay for a fifth year to earn a master’s. The professor who supervised his master’s was trying to decide whether or not to launch a major research project studying the natural-gas sector in India, so he arranged Mike’s thesis to act as an exploration of the project’s viability. In the fall of 2005, after Mike finished his graduate degree, his supervisor decided he liked what he saw and launched the major research project. Not surprisingly, he asked Mike to help him lead it—at this point, Mike had just spent a year getting up to speed on its details.

Mike, who is competitive by nature, tackled the project with intensity, driven by the belief that the better he did now, the better his options would be later. “During this time, I traveled to India ten times and to China four to five times, in addition to quite a bit of travel in Europe,” he recalls. “I met with the heads of major utilities, and I learned how the global energy market really works.” When the project concluded in the fall of 2007, Mike and his professor held a major international conference to release and discuss the results. Academics and government officials from around the world attended.

With the project complete, Mike had to decide what to do next. Of the many valuable skills he picked up from the project, one in particular was a “deep understanding” of how the international carbon market works. As part of this expertise, he learned that the United States had an obscure exchange, known as the renewable energy credits market. “Almost no one understood these things; it was a really fractured market with huge information asymmetry,” he recalls. Being one of the few people who actually knew how this market worked, Mike decided to start a business. He called it Village Green. The idea was simple: You give money to Mike, he does complicated transactions that only he and a few other energy regulation wonks really understand, and then he offers you certification that you’ve purchased enough carbon offsets for your business to be deemed carbon neutral.

Mike ran this business for two years along with a friend from Stanford and a rotating series of other partners. They were headquartered in a rental house not far from where he lived in San Francisco. The company never struggled to pay its expenses, but it also never became a thriving concern. So when the economy went sour in 2009, Mike and his partner decided to shutter it instead of hunkering down and trying to ride out the recession.

“We decided to get real jobs,” is how Mike describes what happened next. Here’s how the process unfolded: A stand-up comedian friend of Mike’s had a girlfriend who was interviewing at a venture capital firm. She decided not to take the job, but recommended that they talk to Mike. “She thought I would be a good fit for venture capital, given my experience with my company,” he said. Mike knew that he was not a good match for this technology-focused fund. “I have no idea how to find the next Facebook,” he told me, “but I could tell you if a solar energy firm was probably going to make money.” He figured, however, that since he had never been through a real job interview before, the experience would provide good practice.

“The interview was pretty low-key, because we both realized early on I wasn’t going to get this job, but we hit it off on a personal level” he recalls. At some point in the discussion, the venture capitalist had an idea. “You know, you would be a good match for this cleantech fund that’s starting up,” he said. “Why don’t I introduce you to my friend over there?”

In the summer of 2009, Mike started a trial period as an intern at the Westly Group. In October they gave him a full-time position as an analyst, and soon after, he was promoted to associate. Two years later he became a director. “When people ask me how I got my job,” he now jokes, “I tell them to make friends with a comedian.”