What am I responsible for when my investments reshape companies and lives?

You are waking up to the reach of what you do, and that is a heavier thing than any deal memo prepares you for. Capital does not just move numbers. It opens plants and closes them, grows careers and ends them. You are right to feel the weight. Responsibility does not mean you control every outcome. It means you do not get to pretend the outcomes are none of your business. The money passed through your hands. The choices bore your name. Owning that is not a burden to escape; it is the price of the influence you hold. Start by naming, for one holding, the people who live downstream of your decisions. Not abstractions, actual people. Ask what you owe them beyond a return. Let that question sit at the table next time, alongside the model. That is where real stewardship begins.