There are amazing highs and desperate lows to running an ultramarathon in volatile weather. It’s much like being in the investment business, or so discovered Hong Kong’s Derek Kwik.
The out-of-work venture capitalist last month ran a 140-mile, seven-day marathon across the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. “It was just brutal,” says Kwik, 36.
During the first 24 hours, he ran 20 miles at an altitude of 13,500 feet in 88-degree temperatures that plummeted to 28 degrees at night. Stumbling over that day’s finish line after having crossed an ice-cold river, Kwik succumbed to altitude sickness, collapsed and had to be carried into his tent by fellow runners.
“At that point, it was just so difficult,” he recalls. “But I got a good night’s sleep and told myself to pull my head together and just get it done, which is what I did.” Kwik not only survived the weeklong ordeal, placing 46th out of 74 finishers, he raised $90,000 for Hong Kong’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Marathoner Kwik understands the hazards of a misstep. In March 2000 he quit Kroll Associates, where he was analyzing Asian tech companies, to join high-flying private equity specialist AsiaTech Ventures. There he got to work with investors like NTT DoCoMo, Sun Microsystems and Singapore’s Government Investment Corp. Unfortunately, the tech bubble had already begun to leak, and Kwik soon found himself helping to liquidate the $230 million-in-assets firm. Out of work since June 2002, he now wants to participate in another marathon: Asia’s venture capital race.
