Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 944: Grown Ups

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“Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.”

There have been a number of articles written over the last years about the changing face of Venture Capital and the type of companies now funded by VCs.  We are now, depending upon who you ask, in the third generation of West Coast Venture Capitalists.  From the early days of guys like Bill Draper who made Sand Hill Road synonymous with venture capital, to today when we are seeing those who reaped rewards from early successes like AOL, Yahoo!, PayPal, Google and Facebook become the next generation of VC’s.  

I tend to think that this current generation looks more like the first in that we’ve learned a lot over the years and are now back to following the basic principles of business before the majority of investments are made.  Sure, venture investing is like trying to predict what an eight year boy will be like when he is 24, but it’s been encouraging to see that the focus has returned to underlying fundamentals.  The second generation had some growing up to do and it seems to have worked. As we consider approaching investors now, we better have our ducks in a row because this time around we are pitching to grown ups.


Paul tells us clearly that we all have to grow up and put our immaturity aside and stay close to the truth. In our spiritual journey it is easy to fall back into our immature ways and lose discipline, focus and discernment.  It’s no different than how we try to grow in our business life so that we become more knowledgeable, prepared, broadening our perspective and finding our points of view.  We don’t get there by being lazy or flitting around our work.  We rise to the occasion because we are ready and have put in the hours, work and energy to do our best when called upon.  That is what Jesus wants from us too.  We can’t expect to do our best if we continue to allow ourselves to develop spiritually in an immature fashion.  Consider today what you are doing to act like a grown up in the eyes of God?

Reference: Ephesians 4:14 (New Living Translation)