A Conversation About Success
Gary Bassett has spent more than four decades moving between investment banking, software, and private investing. He started as a Senior Vice President at J.P. Morgan, founded and sold Microbank Software to Citicorp, and now runs HP Capital Partners in Dallas as founder, chairman, and managing partner. In between, he stepped away from full-time work for seven years to travel and fund education projects abroad. In this Q&A, he talks about how his idea of success has changed, and what it actually looks like day to day.
How Do You Define Success, in Plain Terms?
I used to think it was a number. A deal size, a return, a sale price. At J.P. Morgan, success meant closing the transaction and getting the promotion. That’s a real kind of success, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise. But it’s a narrow one. These days I think success is whether the thing you built still works without you standing over it. Microbank worked that way. Citicorp bought a system, not a person.
You Took Seven Years Off to Travel and Fund Education Projects. Did That Change How You Measure Success?
It did, more than anything else I’ve done. I was in places where a single school or a digital literacy center changed what was possible for a whole town. Nobody there cared what my title had been at a bank in New York. Success was a building that got finished, a teacher who had materials to teach with. I came back from that stretch with a much smaller tolerance for success that only shows up on a balance sheet.
Does That Mean You See a Difference Between Financial Success and Philanthropic Success?
I used to think they were separate ledgers. Now I think they’re the same ledger, just measured on different timelines. At HP Capital Partners, success shows up in a quarter or a year. With the Bassett Education Foundation or the Global Community Development Initiative, success might take a decade to show up, and sometimes you never get a clean report back. You learn to trust the process more than the proof.
What Did the Microbank Sale Teach You About Success That a Bigger Deal Might Not Have?
Scale isn’t the lesson people think it is. Microbank wasn’t the biggest software company anyone had heard of. It solved a specific problem for banks and construction firms, and it solved it well enough that a company like Citicorp wanted it inside their own operation. The lesson was that success is usually about depth in a narrow lane, not width across many. I’ve tried to carry that into how I run HP Capital Partners. We don’t try to be everything to every market.
What Does Success Look Like Inside HP Capital Partners on an Ordinary Week?
Honestly, it’s quiet. Nobody sees the asset allocation calls or the risk parameter reviews, and that’s the point. If I’m having an exciting week, something has probably gone wrong. Success is boring by design. The return shows up later, built from a hundred unremarkable decisions that nobody would want to read about individually.
Has Your Idea of Success Changed Since Your Days at J.P. Morgan?
Completely. At J.P. Morgan, success had a very public shape: the deal announcement, the promotion, the title change. Later, as a founding shareholder of Lamar National Bank and then at Bank of America, I still measured it that way, mostly. Somewhere around the Microbank sale, and definitely by the time I was overseas funding schools, success stopped needing an audience. I don’t think that’s wisdom exactly. I think it’s just what forty-five years does to a person.
What Would You Tell Someone Who’s Chasing Success Too Early?
Slow down on the definition before you speed up on the chase. I spent years assuming success meant the next title. It’s a fine motivator at twenty-five. It runs out of fuel by fifty. Figure out what you’re actually trying to build, not what you’re trying to be called.
Is There a Marker of Success You Don’t Talk About Much?
Whether I’d do the same work again for free, roughly. Not literally, but in spirit. The Microbank years, the travel years, even the quieter stretches running a fund: I’d choose most of them again. That’s a better test than any number I ever tracked at J.P. Morgan.