CNLP 797 | Why You Shouldn't Chase Your Passion: Bill Gurley on the Delusional Factor Every Outlier Needs and How to Find a Mentor
The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
Carey Nieuwhof
4.8 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2026
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bill Gurley, legendary investor behind Uber, Snapchat, and Twitter, shares why "follow your passion" is dangerously misleading, what to chase instead, what the best startup founders do, and the delusional factor that separates outliers from everyone else.
Plus, his best advice on finding a mentor, landing your dream job, his biggest mistake (passing on Google), and what he'd tell young leaders just starting out.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Art of Leadership Network. |
| 0:02.7 | I had Larry and Sergey of Google present to our partnership when there were 25 employees. |
| 0:09.8 | So at the very beginning, and we failed to lay chase. |
| 0:14.7 | So they presented left, and we didn't try and close that deal. |
| 0:19.2 | And two of the best venture capitalists in the world, John Doer and Mike Moritz ended up close that deal. And two of the best venture capitalists in the world, |
| 0:21.7 | John Doer and Mike Moritz ended up doing that deal. |
| 0:24.7 | And I can remember at the time, |
| 0:27.1 | there were a couple of noes in our mental models. |
| 0:29.8 | Biggest mistake of my career. |
| 0:35.3 | Welcome to the Kerry Newhoff Leadership Podcast. |
| 0:37.9 | Hey, I am so excited to bring you something a little bit different today. |
| 0:41.5 | You know while we're focused on helping leaders in the church space, |
| 0:44.6 | that's people who work at churches, volunteer, sit on boards, invest, that kind of thing. |
| 0:49.6 | Today I'm going to talk to Bill Gurley. |
| 0:51.5 | He is the man behind Uber, Snapchat, Twitter, what else, |
| 0:56.9 | Open Table, Zillow. What did he do? Well, he invested in these companies when they were very, |
| 1:02.6 | very early stage. And my goodness, this is a fascinating conversation. We talk about why you, |
| 1:08.5 | if you're thinking about what you should do with your life, shouldn't chase |
| 1:11.9 | your passion. |
| 1:13.5 | You've got to chase something else instead. |
| 1:15.9 | The delusional factor every outlier needs, I find that fascinating, right? |
| 1:20.6 | If you're a church planter or you want to reinvent a church, are you delusional? |
... |
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