Bijan Sabet, former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic and BC ’91, returned to campus on Tuesday evening to reflect on his journey from uncertain undergraduate to tech executive, venture capitalist, and eventually diplomat.
“Find places where you can be useful, find places where you can take a risk,” Sabet said at an event for the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics’ Ambassador Series.
The talk, held in collaboration with Boston College’s Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, centered on Sabet’s experience building Spark Capital, the venture capital firm he co-founded in 2005.
At BC, Sabet studied accounting and computer science—fields he wasn’t sure would help him in the job market after graduation. But amid the 1991 recession, those skills proved essential as he navigated an emerging tech industry on the verge of rapid growth.
“I’m a bit of an accidental venture capitalist—it was not part of my career path,” Sabet said. “When I graduated from BC in ’91, the economy was tough. It was hard to find positions.”
The weak job market prompted him to pursue early-stage tech roles across the country. While traditional hiring lagged, the startup landscape was beginning to surge, and Sabet quickly found himself at its center. Over the next decade, he held senior executive roles at companies such as WebTV Networks, witnessing the early internet boom firsthand.
“I was really blown away by all the companies, by all the innovation,” he recounted.
That experience eventually led Sabet back to Boston as an entrepreneur in residence at Charles River Ventures, where he met Santo Politi. Together, they founded Spark Capital with a vision of challenging the traditional venture capital norms.
“The idea of Spark was to really do things differently,” Sabet said.
For him, that meant prioritizing the people behind the companies over their spreadsheets. Sabet said he looked for founders he respected and leaders he could see himself working for.
“I want to back founders who are the kind of people I want to work for,” said Sabet. “If an investment doesn’t work out, it’s not the math, it’s the people.”
One of Spark’s signature successes became its early investment in Twitter, with Sabet working on the company’s board from 2008 to 2011. According to Sabet, this particular investment was at the core of both his and Spark’s investment strategy.
“It was the first time I had seen something that combined utility and fun,” he said.
Another tenet of his philosophy at Spark was to back leaders motivated by building, not disrupting for its own sake.
“The founders we backed with the most powerful ideas were the ones who wanted to create something, not disrupt things,” Sabet said.
This vision is one that Sabet would carry into his subsequent career in public service.
After supporting Joe Biden during the 2020 election cycle, Sabet was approached by the Biden administration about serving as an ambassador in Europe. He accepted the nomination after consulting his family and five former U.S. ambassadors to the Czech Republic and was confirmed in December 2022.
“Even though it was relatively short compared to my work in the private sector, it changed my life substantially,” Sabet said.
His time as an ambassador coincided with the Russia-Ukraine War, which spurred major refugee and humanitarian efforts across Eastern Europe. He described the Czech Republic’s response as extraordinary.
“The Czechs did inspiring work,” Sabet said, noting that the country welcomed roughly 650,000 Ukrainian refugees—mostly women and children—despite having a population of under 11 million.
Although diplomacy was a shift from venture capital work, Sabet said the similarities surprised him as both demanded relentless work and a focus on people.
“The work is endless at an embassy,” Sabet said.
Reflecting on his varied career, Sabet acknowledged that he felt the same uncertainty about career prospects that many students do now.
“There’s a lot of pressure to figure that out early,” Sabet said.
Still, Sabet credits BC with giving him a solid foundation. He remains deeply engaged with his alma mater, having served on the BC Board of Trustees from 2021 to 2022.
“What I love is how much is changing here for the better,” Sabet said.