Phillip Wickham
Adjunct Lecturer, Design Courses
Bio
“Entrepreneurs invent the future. It is the hardest job there is, and only about 2-5% of start-ups ever really matter.”
Phil Wickham is a veteran venture and startup entrepreneur, and a Founder and General Partner of Sozo Ventures, a leading firm for bold companies ready for global expansion.
He’s also the emeritus Executive Chairman of the Kauffman Fellows, where he’s helping to develop the next generation of leaders in venture capital. From 2008-2016 he served as the organization’s CEO, and expanded the program into more than 40 countries. He also helped conceive, staff, and seed-fund TrueBridge Capital Partners, and is an emeritus advisor to the Creandum Fund in Stockholm.
In addition to his teaching duties at Stanford, he’s a Visiting Professor at Waseda University’s School of Commerce.
He has been playing competitive tennis for longer than he now cares to admit, and was raised in hockey rinks, where he picked up this bit of wisdom from a bench coach that is useful in almost every situation: “Don’t grip your stick so tight.”