Will Borthwick: BOLD Capital Partners
In our Meet a VC series, we sit down with NVCA members to share the people, perspectives, and convictions behind the venture capital industry. This month, we’re joined by Will Borthwick of BOLD Capital Partners — a firm investing in the founders building exponential technologies that move humanity forward.
From the Fed to the Frontier of Exponential Tech
Will Borthwick’s path to venture ran through the Federal Reserve, investment banking, and private equity buyouts of large tech companies. About eight and a half years ago, he joined BOLD Capital — drawn by a team of former entrepreneurs and investors, and a thesis centered on what they call exponential technologies: technologies whose capabilities aren’t improving linearly, but exponentially. Things that were infeasible eighteen months ago become feasible today, and the question becomes how to use that shift to solve a really big and impactful problem.
“How do you fundamentally move the needle to make humanity better?”
The BOLD portfolio reflects that ambition: stratospheric drones, de-extinction, humanoids, and AI-enabled hardware.
What Experience Has Taught Him
Watching Facebook and Snapchat scale from dorm rooms to billion-dollar valuations, Will assumed building a company was easier than it is.
“It turns out it’s incredibly hard. It’s even harder to build a generational company. But it’s also very hard to invest, support, and find the entrepreneurs capable of doing it.”
The other shift he’s watched is the scale of capital flowing into what was once a “small, cottage, bespoke, artisanal industry.” When he started, a $15–20 million Series A was considered large. Today, $150 million Series As are part of the conversation.
Beyond the Check: What Real Support Looks Like
Venture, Will argues, isn’t a fancier broker-dealer collecting a fee on the wire. It’s what happens after.
“When we invest into a company, it’s truly a marriage — not a date or a fling. We get in the bunker with you through thick or thin.”
Being a founder is one of the loneliest jobs there is. The buck stops with the CEO. Showing up — for advice, introductions, customer and executive connections, the personal calls as much as the professional ones — is the job. “Whether it’s a shoulder to cry on or a person to scream at, that’s an important part of the role. We are capital allocators and investors, but in a lot of ways we’re entrepreneurs ourselves. I’d view it almost as an operator-investor.”
What He Wishes More People Understood
For policymakers and observers, Will offers two things he wishes were better appreciated. The first is about founders: building a company is extraordinarily hard, and the roadblocks they hit feel unnecessary. “They start companies to change the world in an impactful way. It comes from a place of good.” Technology, he argues, is the engine that has carried humanity forward — and entrepreneurialism is how it gets built.
The second is about VCs themselves. The cartoon version — five-minute meetings, large checks, walking away — bears little resemblance to the people he works with.
“We are capital allocators and investors, but in a lot of ways we’re entrepreneurs ourselves. I’d view it almost as an operator-investor, rather than a passive investor.”
Why He’s Optimistic
The world is uncertain, Will acknowledges, and our information environment amplifies it. But the underlying trajectory is hard to argue with. He frames it as a longer arc of democratization of capability: twenty years ago, you needed your own server racks. Then came cloud compute on demand. Now we have intelligence on demand in the palm of our hands.
“When you give people opportunity and capability, they do really impressive things. And it’s only going to get better tomorrow, and a year from now, and five years from now. It’s like we have superpowers — and our superpowers just keep getting stronger.”
That’s what keeps Will at the table. The companies BOLD backs aren’t just building products — they’re building the infrastructure of what humanity will be capable of next.