I met Kristen Faulkner at midnight.
At least, it was midnight for me: Faulkner, a cyclist who’d just won two Olympic gold medals, was in Paris and it was morning for her—she was coming off a day where she’d done about 10 hours of media interviews.
Even in a Snoop Dogg-heavy, narratively rich Olympics, Faulkner’s story in its broad strokes captured people’s imaginations: In 2021, the Harvard grad left her venture capital job—in most news articles termed as her “finance job”—in the dead of the pandemic. Less than four years later, she’s a two-time Olympic champion. Zoomed out, that sounds like a fairy tale.
But when Faulkner and I spoke for an hour (across three video conferencing platforms, me in my flannel pajamas), she was very clear—that her Olympic story wasn’t a fairy tale. It was a byproduct of systematic planning and dedication. Faulkner’s story is one of someone who assessed the risks, and then went all-in. Faulkner had been a collegiate rower, and had a substantial athletic background as she first ventured into cycling back in 2016. And she really liked her job as an investor at Threshold Ventures. But as Faulkner became more and more invested in cycling, she experimented and tested the limits of her skills and passion for the sport—eventually getting to the place where she was ready to take the risk of surrendering her life to cycling.
You can read our full interview here. But here's an outtake from when I asked if there was a specific moment when she decided to leave VC behind.
“There was a moment actually,” Faulkner said. “I was with my brother, and we were having pizza. I said ‘you know, I’ve always wanted to go to the Olympics. I feel like I could maybe do it in cycling, but I’d have to go all-in and give it 100%.’ And my brother, who was working at General Atlantic at the time, said: ‘So, is this a goal or a dream?’ I said it was a dream. And he said: ‘If it’s a dream, why are we even having this conversation? You have to go do it. Weigh the pros and cons, but you can't just let a dream go by. If it’s really a dream, you’ve got to do it.’ And that was a turning point for me, it gave me the courage. I can't just let this go by. When I'm 80 years old, I don't want to look back and feel like I didn't pursue a dream that I had.”
Faulkner left VC three years ago, but VC social media was pretty euphoric (and I think rightfully impressed) about one of their own getting the gold. I told Faulkner she was a hero on VC Twitter (yes, now X), and she laughed.
“It’s actually funny,” she said. “I finished my race and I wasn’t looking at any media. Then yesterday, I had 10 hours of interviews. So I’ve only heard about VC Twitter. My little brother was saying there was a hashtag that was like ‘there’s nothing we can’t do’ or something about VC Brags? I haven’t caught up on it all!”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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