Tony Conrad: Betting on Obsession, Not Industries

Human Success Stories · Sep 16, 2026 · 1h 3m

Tony Conrad co-founded True Ventures, where for two decades he's had a habit of writing the first check into companies nobody else believed in yet — Automattic, Blue Bottle Coffee, Sweetgreen, FitBit, Slack, Peloton, years before any of them were sure things. He talks about growing up in a small Indiana farming town, working as his fraternity's janitor to pay for college, a decade at Groupe Danone that took him from Paris to Jakarta, and co-founding Sphere and About.me — including the unusual story of selling About.me to AOL, buying it back, and selling it again. He also tells the handshake…