From LinkedIn to Launching Ventures: An Entrepreneurial Journey
Mike Gamson has built a career at the intersection of leadership, growth, and innovation. From leading LinkedIn’s global sales team through its $26 billion acquisition by Microsoft, to scaling Relativity as CEO, to guiding Evozyne at the forefront of AI-driven biotech, Mike’s journey reflects the power of vision paired with execution. Now, as co-founder of Permanent Capital Ventures and an active angel investor in 100+ companies, he continues to shape the future of entrepreneurship and investing. In this candid one-on-one, Mike shares the lessons, inflection points, and guiding principles from his entrepreneurial journey—and what it takes to build lasting impact across industries.
Moderator:
Chief Content Officer
Smart Business
Dustin is an award-winning business journalist, bestselling author, and the chief content officer of Smart Business. Over the past 30 years, he has interviewed thousands of business and civic leaders, and helped more than 50 CEOs and entrepreneurs transform their ideas into books. A trained investigative politics reporter and former digital media entrepreneur, Dustin joined Smart Business in 1997 after serving as an editor at several daily newspapers.
Panelists:
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Permanent Capital Ventures
Mike is a Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Permanent Capital Ventures, an expansion stage venture capital firm. Before Permanent Capital Ventures, Mike had a successful career as an operator and investor.
Mike was previously CEO at Evozyne, a Chicago based A.I. biotech company that aims to make novel proteins that can solve long standing challenges in therapeutics and sustainability.
Prior to Evozyne, Mike was CEO of Relativity, a Chicago-based legal technology company most recently valued at $3.6B and backed by SilverLake as well as Iconiq Capital.. As CEO he significantly grew and expanded the company, accelerated industry adoption of new products, and developed the company’s social impact programs.
Most notably, Mike spent 11 years at LinkedIn as the #2 operating executive leading the company across all revenue functions. Mike oversaw all commercial activity at LinkedIn globally, growing revenue from ~$10M to >$5B and the successful $26B acquisition by Microsoft.