A Reminder of “Why I Love You” – Managing Downtime and Dynamics Between Fundraising Meetings

I recently read Mark Suster‘s 2018 blog post about startups on “Remind me why I love you again?”. As an extremely active VC, he specifically detailed why, unfortunately, by meeting 2, 3, and so on with a founder, he may forget the context of reconnecting and why the founder/startup is so amazing. And, simply, he calls it “love decay”.

The longer it has been since a VC/founder’s last meeting, the harder it is to recall the context of the current meeting. Though I may not be as over-saturated with deal flow as Mark is, it is an unfortunate circumstance I come across in meeting 5-10 founders and replying to 100+ emails a week.

Some perspective on my schedule

The fact I’m taking a second meeting with founders means I love them. The thing is I don’t always remember the ‘why’. It’s also probably how my brain works. ‘Cause I seem to recall all the esoteric details of the conversation, but never seem to have a good grasp of the core of our conversation without my notes. That said, if we schedule a follow-up within the week, chances are I’ll still remember most of what we chatted about.

I try my best to load my notes into the Notes section in each meeting slot on my calendar. But,

1. Sometimes I forget.
2. Or, sometimes, I’ve stacked myself with back-to-back meetings and don’t have time to review my notes before my call/conversation with a founder.

Neither of which am I pleading a victim clause, but both of which are fallacies (not excuses) of my personality, and am actively working on fixing. The latter of which I solve by giving me 15-30 minutes of breathing time between meetings. I say “working on fixing” instead of “have resolved” since there are still a handful of situations where I have overbooked myself.

I suspect I’m not alone here either. And in the world of COVID, remote work, and online meetings, it’s become increasingly easier to stack more meetings in a given day than before, when we had buffer/travel time between Meeting 1 and Meeting 2. Even post-COVID, many of my colleagues and research into the market has shown that a hybrid model will still exist in the coming years.

What does that mean? This wealth of information has created and will continue to create a poverty of attention. While this would sponsor another discussion on the attention economy as a whole, I’ll leave that for a different post.

The simple prefacing framework

I’ll keep it simple. I love it when founders preface and context-build, and it’s a practice I’ve picked up in the past year when I reconnect with folks.

“The last time we chatted about X and Y. And you suggested Z. Here’s what I’ve done about Z since the last time we chatted.”

Why?

1. You’re giving context as to where our last conversation finished on and where this conversation will pick up on. Like in a TV show, where they outro with “Next time on [insert TV show name]” and intro with “Last time on [insert TV show name]”. Even if I’ve prepared for the current conversation, it’s always nice to hear it being reinforced.
2. It signals that you paid attention last meeting.
3. My thoughts and advice did not go to waste. And you’ve taken actionable steps to realize/ponder it. Whether you end up using the advice or not, at the very least, I feel that I’m heard.
   • As my first mentor once told me: “If you want my advice, you better take it seriously.” Don’t ask for advice if you don’t plan to follow through. Just like, personally, I never ask for book recommendations if I don’t plan to read them in the first place.
   • At the same time, there are things I say I don’t expect founders to take to the grindstone. And when they do, it really puts a smile on my face.

In closing

There’s a saying I learned about communities out there: “A strong community has both value and values.” In parallel, the same is true for building relationships between founders and VCs (including current and future stakeholders), but also at large. Value comes from each interaction and their respective takeaways. Values come from your moral code in acting on each takeaway – being purposeful with what you say and what you do. In other words, accountability.

Photo by Fadi Xd on Unsplash

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