Scion of US$63B media fortune revamps wealth with tech bets
BNN Bloomberg
Don Butler was looking to quit his Ph.D in political science when a business contact introduced him to Peter Thomson, a member of the dynasty behind Thomson Reuters Corp. and one of the world’s biggest fortunes.
That connection led to the Canadian billionaire hiring the former banker to ramp up his Silicon Valley assets and diversify his fortune away from his family’s namesake media empire, with Thomson becoming a prolific backer of North American startups across finance, cybersecurity and marketing.
Now, rising rates, weakening economic growth and widespread inflation are doing nothing to slow down Butler, who joined Thomson’s venture arm in San Francisco at the turn of the century. After leading the firm through the dot-com bubble era and the 2008 financial crisis, the former Lehman Brothers investment-banking analyst is scouring the wreckage of a tech slump that has caused steep losses at hedge funds and investment firms worldwide.
“This will be what feels like our fourth turn of the cycle,” Butler, Thomvest Ventures’ managing director, said in a recent interview. “We’ve been kicking ourselves for not having taken more risk” when valuations were still surging, he added.
