Bio - Banquo Labs

About Me

Bo Brustkern

Cred: Former VC and 3x Co-Founder.

Known for: Financial acumen, creativity, team leadership, community building.

Recent gig: Co-Founder of Fintech Nexus, one of the world’s most respected digital media companies covering frontier financial technologies.

Personal mission: To build the next generation of business leaders.

I move fast

I’m an entrepreneur, which means I tend to move fast, and with creativity.
Sometimes things get broken. That’s ok with me as long as they get fixed straight away, and we keep moving forward.

It also means I am resourceful.
Where there are people patching problems, I establish processes. Where there are processes addressing problems, I implement systems. When successful, this not only solves the core problem but also makes us more scalable.

It also means I believe in total ownership.
Where there are people patching problems, I establish processes. Where there are processes addressing problems, I implement systems. When successful, this not only solves the core problem but also makes us more scalable.

I’m good at a few things

I am good at inspiring action. I am a leader and I like to build and manage high-impact teams.
I am good at leading change. I love implementing new tech and processes that allow scale.
I love finding strong signal among the deafening noise.
I am good at business development. In this role I think of myself as solving real problems for real people. There is a human connection between us, and that matters.

I wrote my first line of code in 1984. It went 10 GOTO 20.

I am highly analytical and love a good data viz. I own signed copies of each of Ed Tufte's three seminal works.

I'm great at building relationships, although not as good at keeping up with everyone I have met in my adventures. Some of my favorite people haven't heard from me in years. I'm working on this.

I synthesize and simplify complex concepts. I snip the stray threads until all that remains is the essence of the thing itself. If I have any genius in me, this is it.

My career spans nearly 30 years

My LinkedIn page is pretty comprehensive. I’m a publisher there and post new stuff fairly often.

Over the years I’ve posted a few actually important insights that may interest you

I wrote a white paper on secondary liquidity in 2013 called Private Company Liquidity: Fueling American Entrepreneurship. I think it stands the test of time, and is more relevant now than ever. At its root, the piece is a thesis on the value of entrepreneurial specialists.
Amid the first pandemic quarantine of 2020, I wrote a short piece called Where are we now? Understanding four operating environments and our response to change. I like this model, and I come back to it often. The challenge is to keep refreshing the cycle, with or without the influence of extrinsic chaos.
I’ve been interviewed many times by friends and strangers alike. The collection of video interviews appears here, in My video narratives.
I have filmed many short takes while on the road speaking to fintech leaders and called the collection Fintech Nexus on Location.
Occasionally I appear on someone’s podcast. Here’s a snippet from one: How I ended up at Dartmouth College.

You might want to know

I have five kids and one amazing wife.
Cycling and backcountry skiing are my things.
Really, anything involving adventure, hard work, and a little daring are my things.
I’m a grammar hawk.

You might want to read

I’ve read a thousand books. Some of them great.

Data, Strategy, and Econ books

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Ed Tufte
Thinking Strategically by Dixit & Nalebuff
The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan
The Fourth Turning by Strauss & Howe
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective by Lehman and Stanley

Soft-skills books

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Actual books

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Blue Highways by William Least-Heat-Moon
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
The Boys in the Boat by D.J. Brown
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski