Yesterday, I tossed aside the biblical admonition and sat down to do some judging. It was a real pleasure and an eye-opener.

Every so often (it has been 18 months since the last one), the Nashville Business Incubation Center (http://www.nbiconline.com/) holds a Business Plan competition. Aspiring entrepreneurs take classes at the Center and work with assigned SCORE (http://www.score.org/index.html) mentors and others to develop their business plans and then pitch them to several dozen judges–most of whom are bankers.

I joined three other judges and, as we sat down together, one asked “What bank are you with?” I thought he was asking for business: who did I bank with, perhaps, I was looking for a new bank. I was way off base. He worked for a bank and wanted to know what banks we worked for. All three of my colleagues were bankers, I was the lone lawyer or business consultant–and that surprised me. I have two finance degrees and a deep appreciation for cash flow but I also have a passion for entrepreneurship that goes beyond numbers. The funny thing, of course, is that everyone of the entrepreneurs we met and whose work we judged was visibly passionate about their lives and work. During my Q&A time, I took it upon myself to share this good news and the bad news: most venture capitalist and bankers express less interest in passion than numbers, you need to rein in the passion and present hard numbers in a pragmatic manner. That was deflating, I knew, because I’d been there myself. I also new that it could be eye-opening because I’d seen that, too. I hoped that are entrepreneurs would use their passion to fuel further research and calculation and not let the need for hard number quash it. That got me thinking.

What is the role of passion in today’s world of venture capital? Does every passionate founder need a grounded numbers-person to counter-balance and steer their financial affairs. Credentials, experience, or eager buyers are understandable prerequisites to earn large sums of seed money or investment but what place is there for passion? When the numbers aren’t quite right but pretty darn close, who wins? The person writing the check, for better or worse, I’m afraid. And that is the reason why I’m a harsh critic when reviewing written business plans or responding to verbal pitches. I hope that every entrepreneur makes it to the next round, so I rail them with the worst possible interpretation of everything they’ve done or failed to do and offer them direction and my willingness to help them out. An endless stream of MBAs will serve the 0.03% of all businesses that are Fortune 500 firms. With like-minded others, I will serve the 99.7% who aren’t.