Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

One of the items on my bucket list is to be a fly on the wall when the investment committee of a large venture capital (VC) fund convenes. I want to see how they make those outsized bets (or goof up on simple ones). 

I may not be a welcome guest, at least not as long as I’m a journalist. But what the heck, a bucket list idea is a bucket list idea. 

Anyway, I sometimes compensate for this by closely following what dyed-in-the-wool venture capitalists bet on in their personal capacity, or when they take to writing books.  

Last week, John Doerr, one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, gave away a tenth of his personal wealth (an impressive US$1.1 billion) to Stanford to set up a new school for climate studies. It was apparent he was invoking one of the lesser known of the 12 laws that Eugene Kleiner, the late co-founder of the legendary fund Kleiner Perkins, left behind. 

The law: There is a time when panic is the appropriate response.