A Meditation on Mike Brown at 40
When most people turn 40, they remark on how they feel old. Oh my God, I’m 40. To those who know Mike Brown, who note his three children, two beautiful homes, the hobbies he keeps, the responsibilities he gladly takes on, this feels like a Benjamin Button birthday. This guy’s only 40? In the parlance of venture capital, at 40 years old Mike Brown is finally growing into his valuation.
I had the privilege at his wedding to take stock in Mike as a single man and now I’m blessed to do a performance review of his last ten years as a business owner, husband and father.
Judging by the people here, you can see that one of the hallmarks of being Mike Brown is his inherent stability. The friends gathered here are many of the same riff raffs and charlatans who were at the wedding, along with some wonderful new folks he’s met along the way. A good VC will invest in people and that’s what Mike does, doubling and tripling down on the relationship over the years, investing in friends like founders, across each life stage, from singledom to coupledom to parenthood.
At 40 years old, Mike has kept up his figure pretty well. We’ve done 5 Ironmen together over the last ten years and as you get older, you realize it’s often easier to catch up while working out. It’s also arguably a better way to chase dopamine than to fade 6 vodka sodas before getting kicked out of a nightclub. Hey, don’t knock it ’til you tried it.
You may have noticed that over the last decade, Mike has become more modulated. We remember with rolled eyes how Mike could get get real big on the ups and deep in the downs but at 40, Mike has found his energetic cruising altitude. Sometimes he overcorrects with the stoicism. Three times in the last decade, when Mike would share not just good news, but like, the best news of his whole God damn life, it would go something like “Liz. Pregnant. Boom”. I’d be like whatsthematterwithyou and greet the news with the ecstatic joy that you think the moment deserves — “dude holy sh — that’s so exciting!” and…Mike would deflect. He deflects with a “mehhh.” Meeeeeh. Anti-climax Mike over here.
I recently said something to Mike about how oh you wouldn’t want to do that it’ll affect your quality of life. Mike’s like “pssht, quality of life, come on, bro, you know I don’t care about that! Whatsthematterwithyou?”.
That’s the other great thing about Mike that hasn’t changed: he still sounds like he’s got a perpetual sinus infection, like a Jersey James Cagney. If Mike wasn’t so deeply rooted in family and heritage, perhaps his accent wouldn’t work so well for him. But the thing is, for high achievers, the enduring gift of growing up in New Jersey is that it makes you sound like an ordinary guy even with all the success in your life. “Hey. uh, yeah, Miss, uh how you doing? Yeah, it would be real great if you could, uh, help me notarize this form, so I can buy this second home”.
But Mike never condescends. He shows up kind and curious with whomever he’s talking to, from the neighborhood high school kid to the cab driver. Everyone has a light that Mike sees and something from whom he can learn, from stone masonry to upstate lumber supply chain. While most people just hire contractors, Mike must apprentice with them to learn how to refurb board and batten siding or reno a greenhouse his damn self.
These abilities as a polymath make him a great VC. The talent that allows him to become an upper quartile performer among Columbia college alumni is the same that makes him the envy of the Columbia County garden scene.
And while he’ll diligence investment opportunities to the hilt and research the how-tos of homeowning, Mike intuits parenting. When it comes to loving his boys, he goes by feel. When it comes to moving them around, to feeding, coordinating and transporting them, his geekish fascination with systems and logistics kicks in and like his parents before him, he handles the work with relish. Pick, pack and ship ’em out to camp.
As you get older, you start become more like your old man and another thing that will never change about Mike, like Mike Sr. before him, is that he’s constantly dropping names of people you’ve never heard of that he assumes you should know. It’s not celebrity name dropping but an endearingly familiar name check, spanning all the people in his life: “You know Bob Cusamano, great guy, Germantown Garden Supply. Oh you don’t know Kurt Bauer? Great guy, St Thomas Episcopal Parish Board of Trustees. David Giannetto? Great guy, CEO of WorkWave, cloud-based solutions for service providers.” I don’t know these guys, I’m pretty sure Liz doesn’t know these guys, but Mike does and they genuinely seem great.
After being noticeably absent from social media, on July 2, 2021, Mike debuted The Peary Homestead, an Instagram account that documents “bringing an old home back to life one day at a time”. The Peary Homestead (TPH if you’re nasty) reads like insight into Mike’s subconscious: rigorous explainers mixed with impressionistic landscapes, speckled with loving looks at his family. The account reveals an artist at the helm, a guy with a beautiful eye, not just a green thumb. It’s yet another example of Mike’s love of mastery, stepping into something new, finding mentors, learning a space and getting good over time.
These days we’ll spend as much time together as a couple and in that we have The Mike and Elizabeth Club — two Jersey guys with southern gals bopping to the Keys, shopping in Paris and getting real y’all in Montreal.
And I know this moment is about Mike but I love Liz dearly. If the last ten years have confirmed anything, it’s that she’s the best decision Mike’s ever made and the greatest stroke of divine luck in Mike’s life. She’s kind, deeply loving and feels ever more like chosen family.
The thing about turning 40 is that relationships become harder. When you’re younger it’s easy to take time with your friends for granted, you’ll walk by their house, you’ll be in the neighborhood but around now is when you start to feel the weight of responsibility that life imposes like gravity. Friends move away, they have competing demands for their time, work demands more of you, until you realize, I haven’t seen this person in friggin’ years. It takes intentionality, planning, negotiation; it takes energy, force of will even. Just to see Mike these days, I’ll need to get on a plane or he’ll have to hop on a train, then take a cab over to Brooklyn or I’ll bike over to Manhattan at 630 in the morning or Mike will fight Lyme disease and take the tubes out of his arms and sprint out of the hospital to get to his buddy’s wedding.
All of this to say, you realize that some friends come into your life for a reason, others for a season and some for a lifetime. Mike came into my life for a very specific work-related reason, now we’ve crossed over into multiple seasons — single man, serious relationship, marriage, kids — so we’ve officially entered lifetime territory. Let’s raise our glass and toast the man with the wine-stained teeth, Mike Brown, great guy.
