Why CEOs need to think like athletes: Byron Deeter on investing and peak performance

Executive overview

Most venture investors either over-operate or stay too distant. Byron Deeter's framework is built around backing already-great teams, staying out of their way, and adding value through high-frequency, low-friction touchpoints rather than board-meeting advice.

The athlete analogy runs through everything: the same rigour elite sports applies to sleep, mental health, and physical performance belongs in the CEO role — and treating it any other way costs companies real performance.

The best founders combine intense conviction with genuine coachability — and the best investors back them without trying to become them.

From operator to investor: lessons from founding Trigo

• Raised during the dot-com collapse; conviction came from customer experience, not market consensus
• Nine in ten VCs rejected the cloud model — forward costs and backloaded revenue made no sense to most
• Sought out the hardest, most demanding customers as design partners; their endorsements became the lowest-cost customer acquisition channel
• Brought in an external CEO at 26 to provide enterprise air cover — now views this as wrong for most founders
• Sold to IBM for the largest enterprise software outcome of that vintage; stayed one year and one day

What Bessemer taught him about backing companies

• Primary rule: don't try to fix mediocre businesses; back already-great teams and resource them
• Hippocratic oath of venture: do no harm — stay out of the way when things are working
• High-frequency, low-risk communication (texts, quick referrals, WhatsApp) beats structured advice
• Double opt-in for introductions: always ask before connecting, respect the operator's time
• Hold periods average 14 years; qualitative fit with a team matters as much as the numbers

The anti-portfolio and crimes of omission

• The anti-portfolio lists great companies Bessemer had access to and passed on — Tesla, Atlassian among them
• Misses hurt more than failures: saying no is the default (99.9% of pitches), so the bias is already against bold bets
• Published publicly to signal ongoing support for founders they passed on, and to force honest self-examination
• The lesson: start from what could go right, not what could go wrong — think in multi-horizon scenarios

Investing in Anthropic

• Bessemer missed the hyperscaler wave; foundation models looked like the next version of that opportunity
• Bet on Anthropic's enterprise focus, API-first strategy, and talent magnetism around Dario Amodei
• Entered when the business was gross-margin negative — conviction that value delivery would fix the unit economics
• Ethical AI commitment mattered: enterprise trust, talent attraction, and personal alignment with how Bessemer wants to operate
• Now Bessemer's largest single check; thesis is that foundation models become the new hyperscalers

Conviction and coachability in founders

• The two traits appear contradictory but must coexist: decisive action after gathering input, plus willingness to revisit
• Red flag: when pressure mounts and founders turn inward, shut off communication, stop seeking input
• Best leaders reach outward when intensity mounts — more information, not less, before deciding
• Founder product insight is irreplaceable; tapping out early destabilises the company and destroys founder magic
• Design the founder role around their highest-impact activities; hire everything else around them

The STRIVE program: applying athlete principles to CEOs

• CEOs manage tens of millions in personal value, billions in company value — yet often treat their bodies worse than amateur athletes
• Sleep deprivation is statistically equivalent to running a company drunk; the bravado around sleeplessness is counterproductive
• STRIVE covers: sleep, training, regimen, and emotional/mental health
• Bessemer runs events mixing portfolio CEOs with professional athletes (NFL players) to normalise discussions about psychologists, mental health, and performance tracking
• Tools deployed: Whoop bands, Eight Sleep, cold exposure, light management, caffeine protocols
• Mental health is treated as an executive skill; three CEOs tapped out in the same year due to stress — resources must be proactive, not reactive
• ROI is real: better-performing CEOs mean better portfolio outcomes; the programme started from founder demand, not investor marketing

Navigating macro volatility in 2026

• The current environment is the most volatile since COVID — uncertainty is high regardless of company-level optimism
• Core principle: never run out of money; raise earlier than feels necessary, maintain buffer against macro disruption
• Bessemer scaled up fund size partly to insulate portfolio companies through rounds
• AI-native companies are pulling capital away from legacy cloud companies that are not adapting
• Ten-person companies reaching billion-dollar valuations are already here; single-person billion-dollar businesses likely within a year