For our most recent edition of Conversations, we sat down with product innovator, venture capitalist, and all-around interesting guy, Wesley Chan. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or as its colloquially known M.I.T., Wesley began his career at a startup you may have heard of called Google. He was instrumental in developing Google Analytics and Google Voice and is now a Managing Director at Felicis Ventures.

Here are five takeaways from our fireside chat with Wesley Chan:

1. Luck and Timing

When Wesley initially started at M.I.T in the mid-1990s, it was the beginning of the “dot com boom” but by the time he graduated in 2000, it was the dot com bust. The only company in tech that was hiring was Google, which many thought was a fad. It was just a search engine and they hadn’t quite figured out how to make money yet. Google, as we now know, is one of the most successful companies on the planet. It just goes to show that out of what was thought to be a tech recession came this amazing company and it all comes down to luck and timing.

“At the end of the day, 90% of why we succeed is that we have the timing and we stumbled upon something at the right moment,” says Chan.

2. The Bigger Your Team, The Trickier It Is to Solve Problems

At the advent of Google, all the big inventions such as Analytics, Chrome and G-mail were just side projects with small teams that grew once they proved they could make money. During Wesley’s time at Google, the team grew from 100 people to 70,000 people very quickly. He is self-admittedly impatient. He once bought a grand piano with the end goal of learning how to play Chopin in three months. He hired several piano teachers who tried to teach him scales and told him it would take years for him to play Chopin. He instead used an iPad and was able to play the compositions he wanted in his goal time. You can imagine that bigger companies test his patience.

Wesley prefers startups as it’s a lot easier to sit in a room with a small group, two pizzas, no distractions and get things done.

He’s most happy being with a company from the start and seeing them through which led him to get into venture capital.

3. Genius Versus Fool

Wesley Chan is known as the “unicorn whisperer.” No, this isn’t a Dungeons and Dragons reference. It means he’s very good at finding startups that eventually get values at over $1 billion. His success goes back to the idea of luck and timing. He says a lot of the time he has no idea if his investment is going to make him a genius or a fool until after about ten years. A lot of his investments are not necessarily obvious at the time, but if he loves the team, market and idea, he’ll take a bet.

4. You Can Still Make Money and Do Good

Money is a mysterious thing that can sometimes have a negative connotation, however, newsflash, you can still make money and do good. Wesley is passionate about his investment in Guild Education. This company essentially works with large companies like Chipotle, Walmart and Disney to give their employees a free college education. Guild was another startup that many investors thought was a crazy idea. However, as soon as Chipotle saw success, it inspired other big brands to tag along. It’s a win-win because the companies see much better employee retention, appear more socially responsible and get higher rates of applications and people who would previously not have access to a college education can attend school for free.

Chan often looks for companies that cannot only generate revenue but also change the world for the better.

5. Arms Dealer Theory

Another way that Wesley Chan looks for investments is using the Arms Dealer Theory. If World War Three broke out, he wouldn’t want to support the side that would win, he would want to be providing the weapons for every country (a metaphor, of course). He reminds us that the company that made all the money during the gold rush was Levi’s who was supplying the clothing and pickaxes. When investing, he asks himself “if the market crashes, will people still buy this?” This theory is why he’s excited about investing in healthcare as it has evergreen value. Research for disease treatment and cures is not affected by a recession. Even though he claims a lot of his career has come through luck and timing, he definitely has the intelligence to back it up.

Conversations is an intimate, member-only event where we invite prominent thought-leaders to share their stories, successes and failures, and answer questions from the Project Spaces community. If you’d like to get inspired by these and other weekly events, we encourage you to check out our Community Membership, or simply book a tour! We would love to show you around.

And finally, a massive thank you to Wesley Chan for taking the time out of his busy schedule to drop some knowledge on us.