Resilience, self-awareness and the Bilt A-round: Camber Creek's Jake Fingert on Not Another CEO

Key points

Key takeaways from Not Another CEO's interview with Jake Fingert, managing partner of Camber Creek (episode 119, October 2026):

• Resilience beats everything: Fingert backs founders who identify a problem with no good solution and will do whatever it takes to solve it — not people drawn to the Silicon Valley or Y Combinator image — because very few companies become multibillion-dollar successes overnight.
• A no can be a request for proof: Camber Creek passed on Bilt Rewards' seed round but stayed in touch; when the founder delivered everything he promised over 12 months — partnerships with major banks, airlines and hotels — Camber Creek was the first call for the Series A, completed with New York-based fund Left Lane.
• Self-awareness is the filter: a founder who answers "what keeps you up at night?" with "nothing" is a quick pass — it signals a lack of self-awareness and empathy for customers, employees and investors.
• Decide fast, verify slowly: Fingert knows within about 30 minutes whether someone is a person he wants to partner with for ten years; customer, investor and even college-roommate references then tell him whether they will build a big company.
• Board meetings are for strategic questions: the most common pitfall is founders asking questions they already know the answer to; financials should go out in advance and the meeting should focus on genuine strategic and resource-allocation choices.
• Path to venture: Fingert started at Deloitte and BCG, managed 350 million square feet of federal real estate as senior adviser at the GSA, then served in the Obama White House as senior policy adviser on the National Economic Council before co-founding Camber Creek in 2017; the firm has nearly $1 billion under management and more than 50 portfolio companies.