This whole Spitzer hullabaloo has me thinking about legacy.  The New York Times put up an interactive timeline, “Milestones in an Ambitious Career,” that curtly sums the New York Governor’s key career moments into a few pictures and captions.  Here’s the headlining snippet:

“Eliot Spitzer’s journey from Harvard Law School to the highest office in New York state was marked by drive, ambition and [sic] string of successful prosecutions as the state’s attorney general.  But as governor, he stumbled repeatedly and faced humiliation after being linked to a prostitution ring.”

Full stop.  I sure hope Governor Spitzer gets a shot at a third sentence to his legacy.

It’s worth thinking about how one gets described and how we describe ourselves.  The venture industry is pretty unique in that almost every investment professional’s bio is online and readily available.  Ultimately, of course, these are sales pitches (primarily to entrepreneurs).  But some of them hint at or even nail down a legacy; consider John Doerr’s inclusion that his and his partners’ investments have created 150,000 new jobs(!).

What role does the self-described legacy, though, have on the impression of others?  Well, perhaps it’s a guideline (and sometimes a revelation of where one stands on the ego continuum).  Doerr frames himself as a champion of economic development rather than an all-star VC.

The venture industry teaches us to distill a company’s offering into one or two sentences.  How many more does an individual get?  Amazingly, even as our lives become more and more “discoverable” with traces of us digitally archived all over, one’s legacy is, with rare exception, going to be a couple simple sound bites.  One might say, “Tread carefully.”  But I guess I’m more a fan of “give it your damndest and stick to your values.”  What will your two (or three) sentences be?  Worth pondering…