About Peter
Peter Sims is a former venture capital investor turned author and entrepreneur focused on creativity, innovation, and leadership. He was coauthor with Bill George of True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek best-selling book that The New York Times called “one of the most important books on leadership to come along in years.” His next book, Little Bets (forthcoming from Simon & Schuster: Free Press, spring 2011), is about discovering new ways of doing things. It draws upon a three-year collaboration with Stanford’s Institute of Design (the d.school), as well as extensive research into the creative thinking methods used by expert entrepreneurs, Army counterinsurgency strategists, Pixar, the architect Frank Gehry, contrarian investors, and stand-up comedians. Before becoming an accidental author, Peter worked as a venture capitalist in the U.S. and Europe with Summit Partners, a leading global investment company, including as part of the team that established the firm’s European Office in London.
Peter is a contributor to the Harvard Business Review Blog, Reuters, The Huffington Post, and TechCrunch. His work has also appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and USA Today. He received an A.B., magna cum laude, from Bowdoin College and an M.B.A. from Stanford Business School where he and his classmates established “Leadership Perspectives,” now one of the school’s most sought-after second year courses. He has spoken or advised at such organizations as Cisco Systems, Eli Lilly, Current Media, Molson Coors, Qualcomm, Frost & Sullivan, and The United States Army.
Peter lives in San Francisco where he is on the national board of Summer Search, a high-impact program that gives low-income high school students the opportunities and support they need to transform their lives. His great-great-great grandfather, Jacob Gundlach, founded Gundlach Bundschu (GunBun) in Sonoma, California’s oldest family-owned winery, which is run today (along with sister winery Bartholomew Park) by his cousins who, unlike Peter, know a lot about wine.
on twitter @petersims
photo by Mona T. Brooks