The Investor. Peter Cowley has a third book out, The Cambridge Entrepreneur and Angel Investor. Is the author of the startup bestseller The Handbook Really the Invested Investor. Now he's focused not on business but on his personal story, public success, private Grief. It charts Peter's struggles through alcoholism, the loss of two sons to suicide, and now a terminal cancer diagnosis in his final book, one in which he puts
his business career into perspective. I went to Cambridge to meet Peter Cowley for a conversation about his life, the VC business and loss. I started by asking him what first drew him into.
His career with the people. I didn't really realize that to start with, but once I got involved and started to have entrepreneurs were generally about half a generation to a generation younger than me. So and nowadays the generation to generation and a half. The people's spending time with those people the ones a good entrepreneur will listen because
they have to listen to the market. They have to listen to customers, they have to listen to regulators, and sometimes they do a listen to investors as well, and they certain need to listen to staff. So they are passionate and they are willing to learn. So I found that spending time with these people was very invigorating and of course taught me a lot about things about technology, about market and so I just got pulled into this spending time with interesting people.
You've written this new book, which is much more personal. Tell us about why you wrote the book, and obviously that you've been struck by some of the worst things that happen to people.
Of course, as many people said, seem to have been unlucky compared with most people. So the book is called public Success, Private Grief. The public success we've just talked about. The private grief is now not so private. So I lost my brother to cancer when he was twenty one. I lost my sister to alcoholism when she was fifty one. I lost my first wife, the mother and my children. She died of DBT when she was fifty one or fifty two. I suffer FM alcoholism, though I've not had
a drink for nearly twenty four years. Sometime next month, I've got late stage cancer. That's what really triggered writing the book. I'll tell him about that at the moment. But the two things that were really are so painful even to talk about, well, to talk about what I am doing, of course, is the loss of two children.
So I had three boys who were two years apart, and my middle son died when he was twenty three, and my youngest son died who helped her with a book project, died when he was thirty four, a couple of years ago. Anyway, it is exactly if you've got any children, anybody who's listeners has got children, don't go there, don't think about it. And then I was diagnosed with late stage four non smoking lung cancer. So one in five lung cancer sufferers haven't smoked, and unfortunately we're the
people who don't. Is not detected still quite late, so it was all over my body, my brain, well, lots of places in the body when he was detected. So that happened at the end of twenty one. And then Alan died at the end of twenty two. And because I've written stuff before, and I'm sure I've helped a lot of people, lots of entrepreneurs, a lot of people in the charity sector over the time, I just felt there was another book in me basically, but not a book in the sense of the other two, which are
business books. A book that is personal, very personal and inspirational. Because I don't know, I come from Yorkshire. I've always been very direct, almost two direct. I'm sure I've just decided to open it all. So I've written a book which is basically a memoir.
What do you hope the messages? Who do you hope is going to read the book? And also what do you think that people are going to learn from it? Because I think the title of the book sort of expresses it, you know, very very well. And I think that that people listening maybe who are facing these sorts of struggles, whatever they may be, what are they going to be able to take in terms of inspiration or just kind of the will to go on.
It's just inspiration for getting on with life, not sweating the small stuff, as the Americans say, you know, you're asking, you know, doing the stuff that might not be might not be around tomorrow, to achieve.
Is it the to do list? I mean, it seems so terribly vc to say I'm going to make a business plan and I'm going to make the best of this awful situation. Is that just the bottom line that's.
One of it? And I have both what I call my bucket list, which we've all heard of, and I also have a list and you can.
Probably imagine might not be able to put that on radio.
Okay, I also have an effort list. Yes, so this, of course it seems that I don't know what to do any longer. There are things that I would have done before that you know.
I go on a few of those.
Well, even things like speaking at events, like mentoring people, like talking to entrepreneurs. There's a lot of things I just think, No.
You don't want to do it anymore.
I've got why not, Well, it's because I haven't got that long left. Because unfortunately, because it's stage four, I do know that from the research that it's unlikely that I live past much past the end of this year. Now this is statistical, of course, but you know the statistical mean half is already before that date and half afterwards, and so something could happen even during twenty twenty four. So yeah, getting on with things. I mean, there's a
number of lessons in the book. It isn't just that there's a number of business lessons. Even in the book. It's not a self help which we did think about doing. It's a memoir which has got a description in there so that people can read and hopefully work out from their own circumstances, which might have to do with something
else and maybe just business failure. They can maybe even from that and the process of the business failing, learn how to cope with their own character and not disappear into a well of grief.
I also as a parent myself, it is the horrifying bit of losing children is so awful. How you how you dealt personally with that in the aftermath.
We couldn't have had this conversation within three months of his death. I just wouldn't have been able to talk about it without ending up in not being able to speak. In fact, obviously I grieve and miss both sons tremendously. But life I need to get on with my life, you know, I need to. It bubbles up. Sometimes. It hasn't bubbled up during this interview, but he could easily have done and whether And part of it, of course, is not so much the busyness, but giving back, and
this book is about that. It's about trying to help other people. I haven't really answered your question, but it's that's because I don't really know in the end, but I'm just not sure how I've coped. You know, there isn't a magic one to coping with tragedies. And I don't think it's because I'm a cold creature that just buries it or ignores it, or my skin shells so sick.
I think I really have sort of been lucky. I had the right assistance at the right time, and I had something to redirect my grief and my addiction into, which has been positive benefit.
Yeah, a lot of our audience they're very young, and they're in the city, and they're in financial services, and it's all about making money, and I just I don't know. I think you've had experience in that world of trying to make it, you know that kind of really the drive of trying to build your own business, trying to do well. It's not exactly the same, I think as being in financial services in the city kind of being
in VC. But I suppose what would you say to those people about the point of it of the money making.
Yeah, money isn't the bial. We all know that. I mean, even that your listeners will know that. In principle. It would be really great if they are in the city, and they staying there, they get to the point at say the age of thirty five, they back out and then they use that money and the time for something else, you know, going to teaching, help charities with time as well as money, etc. I've been obviously, I had customers in the city, so I've spent time with people in
the city. And it is pretty frantic lifestyle. This isn't a rehearsal. Life is not rehearsal. We all know that that's very hackney, isn't it. Enjoy life in some way get the balance right between personal life and work life. And I definitely got it wrong.