Chester Billingsley Biography and Net Worth

Chester “Chet” Billingsley is the founder, chairman, and CEO at Mentor Capital, Inc., a venture capital firm that invests in larger, pre-IPO related acquisitions and fundings. 

Billingsley spent much of his early career at General Electric, working in business development and operations. In 1985, he created Tech Start, which would later become Mentor Capital, in Silicon Valley. 

In 1996, he took the firm public and has since held primary responsibility for financial partnerships with Cambridge Equity Partners, Tech III Partners, and Mentor Investors I, LP. He has directed the acquisitions or investments of over 38 operating portfolio businesses and entities.

In 2013, he took his company into the legal cannabis space in pursuit of an alternative approach to fighting cancer, calming seizures, reducing ocular pressure, and blunting pain, while simultaneously yielding significant shareholder returns. In 2019, the company expanded its target industry to be open to energy, mining and minerals, technology, management services, consumer products, and manufacturing sectors, with a goal of ensuring diversification.

Billingsley is a Minnesota native who received a congressional appointment and completed his undergraduate work at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He then attended Harvard University for his master’s degree in applied physics, followed by time spent at Harvard Business School and at MIT, where he studied proton radiology’s application to difficult-to-treat cancers in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital.