Let’s just get this out of the way: Mark Wahlberg is as A-list as it gets. He broke out in 1997’s “Boogie Nights,” and in the nearly three decades since, he’s built one of the highest-wattage careers in Hollywood: two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe nod for “The Fighter,” multiple Emmy nominations as a producer (HBO’s “Entourage” among them), and a filmography that spans crime dramas, comedies, and action blockbusters. Right now, he’s back on-screen in “By Any Means,” a manhunt thriller set during the 1966 Mississippi civil rights killings.
Wahlberg, who’s leaned almost entirely on entrepreneurial instinct about people, culture, products, and markets, is now someone who’s been building institutional-level investing discipline, with Lee as his guide, and with a growing focus on healthcare and wellness startups. It’s a rare, unvarnished look at how someone with Wahlberg’s cultural intelligence has worked his way into some of the most sophisticated rooms in business and finance.
He also discusses where high-profile entertainers and athletes sometimes get it wrong (Wahlberg is candid about having had to unlearn some of his own old instincts); how he’s used the trust built over a massive career to drive access and deal flow; and which technologies he’s most focused on right now and why.