Category: Startup

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The Third Leg of the Race

swimming, the third leg

I dedicated three-quarters of my life before I turned 18 to swimming. More than half of which I spent competitively. Although I never amounted to a Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky, the years I spent swimming were some of the happiest, yet character-building times of my life.

I was a mid-to-long-distance swimmer – anything between 200 yards (or meters) to miles-long open-water swims in the SF Bay. By golly, the waters in the latter ‘pool’ were dirty. I couldn’t see my own hand when I reached out underwater. But I digress. As a distance swimmer, the biggest lesson I learned was how to fight the mental battlefield.

The Legs of a Race

Coach taught me to break every race down into 4 quarters. The first leg, the second leg, the third leg, and the last leg.

The first leg is comparatively the easiest. You’re brimming with energy, motivation and (potentially nervous) excitement. As long as you don’t exhaust yourself in this leg, but put in enough effort to break away from the pack, you’re golden. And in doing so, you’re going at 80% of your top speed.

The second leg is when you start engaging in a psychological battle with your competitors. Understand where they are in the race, as well as their racing personas.

  • Are they a front-half or back-half swimmer?
  • Are they a sprinter from the blocks?
  • Do they typically negative split in a race?
  • In an individual medley (IM) race, what’s their best stroke? Their worst stroke?

I typically dial back to 70% speed.

The last leg is probably the second easiest. You burn everything and anything you have in the tank. The goal is in sight – within reach. It comes down to how well you’ve raced the first three legs, and how much you trained. Effectively, it is a battle of strength – a Hail Mary. 110% speed.

Now let’s rewind back to the crucial leg I skipped. The whole reason I started writing this post.

The Third Leg of the Race

Whereas the second leg is based on ‘external warfare’ and the last leg is based on ‘physical warfare’, the third leg, and arguably the most important, is one based on ‘internal warfare’. By this point in the race, you’ve exhausted more than half of your energy, yet you’re expected to output more than when you started. You’re worn and tired. And, you can’t see the goal yet, so you know you have to save some strength for the last leg.

Yet, if you can hold this leg, it can mean the difference between a win and a loss. If you lose this leg and succumb to your thoughts, your chances of winning are slim. Quite frankly, it sucks.

So I made bets with myself.

“If I can finish this lap in 14 strokes, where I’m reaching out and scooping that ice cream just out of my arm’s reach, I’m going to treat myself to some Haagen Dazs after. One scoop for every lap I succeed in.”

“I’m going to flip turn faster than my opponents. And if I can do this thrice in a row, I’m going to get rock-solid abs when I finish this race.”

“I’m going to hold my breath till the other side of the pool, so I can smell and taste the teriyaki chicken.” *At swim meets, they’re always selling teriyaki chicken and rice for lunch. It’s greasy, super salty. But if you add some sriracha, it is a hungry swimmer’s heaven.

As you might notice, some of my bets were outright ludicrous. But it was because they were crazy that I was motivated to keep going. When there were no tangible goals, I made my own.

Why am I sharing this?

Life, seeking employment, running a business, and so much more run in the same way. After your academic career, no one really tells you what your goals are or can be. You have to make your own. When you’re job-seeking and no interviews are coming your way, you have to muster the strength to continue applying – either spraying and praying or finding creative ways to obtain certain opportunities.

In startup land, day 1 till day 365 (or even till day 730) will be a honeymoon. It’ll be the first leg. You’re hacking away by yourself or with pals on something you feel strongly about. For many, your next leg is scoping out the competition and pacing yourself.

  • Should you launch with press releases on TC, NY Times, etc?
  • Should you stay in stealth?
  • Can you continue bootstrapping?
  • Do you need to hire more people to help you out?
  • Which distribution channels are the most effective? Overlooked by competitors, but you think there’s a lucky draw in it.

And then, there’s the third leg. The leg that will decide if your adoption curve forms a hockey stick or a pitcher’s mound. You have a vague idea of where you need to go, but you haven’t hit critical mass. You’re questioning your initial assumptions. You might even be questioning yourself. Did you make the right calls? Is there anything you missed? What went wrong? Should you have just taken the job your friend offered?

But if there’s anything we’ve learned from some of the best entrepreneurs out there. It’s the ones who weather the storm – the ones who have that grit – that often make it. Being able to weather that third leg doesn’t guarantee success. But not being able to weather it is close to a sure-fire for failure.

As a world…

We’re on the third leg now.

And what we do now will decide if we win or lose the race.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

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Finding the Sweet Spot – Iterating What and How You Measure Product Metrics

iterating product metrics, measure, measuring tape

Many founders I meet focus on, and rightly so, optimizing their core metrics – a set of units that surprisingly don’t change after its initial inception. But metrics and the way you measure them should undergo constant iteration. Metrics are a way to measure and test your assumptions. 9/10 assumptions, if not all, are honed through the process of iteration. And by transitive property, the metrics we measure, but more importantly, the way we measure them, is subject to no less.

Though I’m not as heavily involved on the operating side as I used to be, although I try to, the bug that inspires me to build never left. So, let’s take it from the perspective of a project a couple friends and I have been working on – hosting events that stretch people’s parameters of ‘possible’. Given our mission, everything we do is to help actuate that. One such metric that admittedly had 2 degrees of freedom from our mission was our NPS score.

The “NPS”

“How likely would you recommend a friend to come to the last event you joined us in?” Measured on a 1-10 scale, we ended up seeing a vast majority, unsurprisingly in hindsight, pick 7 (>85%). A few 9’s, and a negligible amount of 5s, 6s, and 8s. 7 acted as the happy medium for our attendees, all friends, to tell us: “We don’t know how we feel about your event, but we don’t want to offend you as friends.”

We then made a slight tweak, hoping to push them to take a more binary stance. The question stayed the same, but this time, we didn’t allow them to pick 7. In forcing them to pick 8 (a little better than average) and 6 (a little worse than average), we ended up finding all the answers shift to 6s and 8s and nothing else. Even the ones that previously picked 9s regressed to 8s. And the ones who picked 5s picked 6s. Effectively, we created a yes/no question with just this small tweak.

There’s 3 fallacies with this:

  1. Numbers are arbitrary. An 8 for you, may not be an 8 for me. Unless we create a consolidated rubric that everyone follows when answering this question, we’re always going to variability in semi-random expectations.
  2. It’s a lagging indicator. There’s no predictive value in measuring this. By the time they answer this question, they’d already have made their decision. Though the post-mortem is useful, the feedback cycle between events was too long. So, we had to start looking into iterating the event live, or while it was happening.
  3. Answers weren’t completely honest. All the attendees were our friends. So their answers are in part, a reflection of the event, but also in part, to help us ‘save face’.

In studying essentialism, Stoicism, and Rahul Vohra‘s Superhuman, we found a solution that draws on the emotional spectrum that answered 1 and 3 rather well. Instead of phrasing our questions as “How much do you value this opportunity?”, we instead phrased them as “How much would you sacrifice to obtain this opportunity?” Humans are innately loss-averse. Losing your iPhone will affect you more negatively and for longer, than if you won a $1000 lottery.

So, our question transformed into: “How distraught would you be if we no longer invited you to a future event?”, paired with the answers “Very”, “Somewhat”, and “Not at all”. Although I’m shy to say we got completely honest answers, the answers in which we did give allowed for them to follow-up and supplement why they felt that way, without us prompting them.

The only ‘unaddressed’ fallacy by this question – point #2 – was resolved by putting other methods in place to measure attention spans during the event, like the number of times people checked their phone per half hour or the number of unique people who were left alone for longer than a minute per half hour (excluding bio breaks).

Feedback

“How can we improve our event?” We received mostly logistical answers. Most of which we had already noticed either during the event or in our own post-mortem.

In rephrasing to, “How can we help you fall in love with our events?”, we helped our attendees focus on 2 things: (1) more creative responses and (2) deep frustrations that ‘singlehandedly’ broke their experience at the event.

And to prioritize the different facets of feedback, we based it off the answers from the questions:

  • “What was your favorite element of the event?”
  • And, “How distraught would you be if we no longer invited you to a future event?”

For the attendees who were excited about elements closely aligned with our mission, we put them higher on the list. There were many attendees who enjoyed our event for the food or the venue, though pertinent to the event’s success, fell short of our ultimate mission. That said, once in a while, there’s gold in the feedback from the latter cohort.

On the flip side, it may seem intuitive to prioritize the feedback of those who were “Very distraught” or “Not at all”. But they exist on two extremes of the spectrum. One, stalwart champions of our events. The other, emotionally detached from the success of our events. In my opinion, neither cohort see our product truly for both its pros and cons, but rather over-index on either the pros or the cons, respectively. On a slight tangent, this is very similar to how I prioritize which restaurants to go to or which books to read. So, we find ourselves prioritizing the feedback of the group that lie on the tipping point before they “fall in love” with our events.

Unscalability and Scalability

We did all of our feedback sessions in-person. No Survey Monkey. No Google Forms, Qualtrics, or Typeform. Why?

  1. We could react to nuances in their answers, ask follow-up questions, and dig deeper.
  2. We wanted to make sure our attendees felt that their feedback was valued, inspired by Google’s Project Aristotle.
  3. And, in order to get a 100% response rate.

We got exactly what we expected. After our post-mortem, as well as during the preparation for our next event, I would DM/call/catch up with our previous attendees and tell them which feedback we used and how much we appreciated them helping us grow. For the feedback we didn’t use, I would break down what our rationale was for opting for a different direction, but at the same time, how their feedback helped evolve the discourse around our strategic direction. Though their advice was on the back burner now, I’ll be the first to let them know when we implement some element of it.

The flip side of this is that it looks extremely unscalable. You’re half-right. Our goal isn’t to scale now, as we’re still searching for product-market fit. But as you might notice, there are elements of this strategy that can scale really well.

In closing

Of course, our whole endeavor is on hold during this social distancing time, but the excitement in finding new and better ways to measure my assumptions never ceases. So, in the interim, I’ve personally carried some of these interactions online, in hopes of discovering something about virtual conversations.

Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash

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Asking for Mentorship

asking for mentorship

Don’t.

… would be my short answer.

The longer answer… I’ll start with a story.

My First Mentor

This is embarrassing to admit, but 6 years ago, I barely knew what a resume was. As a hint of my ignorance, my first ‘resume’ was 3 pages long, double-spaced, and included two lines explaining a babysitting license I got back in middle school. So, within 10 seconds of it going up, I signed up for the resume workshop. In my hurry, I signed up for the first spot with the first “critique-er” I saw.

When the fateful day arrived, he didn’t show up at our appointed time. After waiting 15 minutes and asking the workshop leads, it turned out he was stuck in the depths of traffic.

But hell, I wasn’t going to go home empty-handed. So, I went around the bustling room, catching each “critique-er” there whenever they had a break, to ask them to look over my sad excuse of a resume. By the end of the two-hour workshop, I had taken notes about the flaws of my resume from every alumni there – half of whom ran through various interview questions with me – except for one. The one I had initially signed up with.

After hearing gossip and rumors from the alumni of how brutally honest he was, I had to meet this mysterious fellow. Eventually, he arrived. And luckily, the alumni invited me to join them for a late dinner. And that night, he left me with one sentence: “If you want my advice, you better take it seriously.” Not in the sense that I need to follow exactly what he tells me, but that I won’t hear then forget it the next morning.

Over the years, I’ve truly appreciated the analytical mind he brought to temper my creative mind. His advice saved my neck saved my neck at multiple crossroads of my career. He was able see around the corner when I couldn’t – a tactical mentor. Though I didn’t use his advice every single time, I always came back to him with the post-mortem.

  • How did I use his advice?
  • If I did, what was its impact?
  • If I didn’t, what was my internal calculus for choosing so?

He never pressured me to use his advice, nor did he ask that I report back to him each time. But I did. Over the years, I’ve been there for his highs and lows, just like he has been there for mine. Before we became mentor and mentee, we realized we had become friends. Ironically, to this day, he still hasn’t seen my resume.

The Bigger Picture

You might call it availability bias, but over the 6 years since then, I’ve reached out to many people – punching above my weight class, inspired to seek mentorship. But out of all the 20+ people that I asked for mentorship on the get-go, not a single one was willing to take on the responsibility for a stranger. And rightly so. Like any other relationship, mentorship requires time and commitment. Without any precedence, it’s hard to make that decision with asymmetric information.

The Venture Parallel

Even as investors, who notoriously have to be willing to not only mentor others through “just a pitch”, but also commit dollars to where their mouth is at, each round of startup funding takes at least 60-90 days of diligence and working together, before we invest. Our goal is to be ‘the best dollar on your cap table‘.

In a literal sense, a dollar is a dollar. Whether you get it from your parents as an allowance when you were 7 years old or from your managerial salary at 27 years old, it’s the same. But, in venture, there’s ‘dumb money’ – money in its most literal sense. And there’s ‘smart money’ – money that comes with advice, resources, social and professional networks, and help.

In most cases, an early-stage founder wants ‘smart money’. In that frame of mind, you want the investor(s) that have the best networks, the best resources, the best expertise, and possibly, the best brand, at your stage of a business. So your pitch should be hyper-specific. As with any ask in the world, nothing is ever guaranteed. But, to increase your chances of a “yes”, the best founders build that relationship before they need to fundraise.

Circling Back

For any other person out there, whose day job isn’t to take measured capital risk, you’ll have to work even harder to convince someone to take that leap of faith with you.

When you ask for mentorship, or advice, in general, follow through with it. Make it known that it is valued. And, show your progress after having tried it out. No person speaks hoping to reach deaf ears. So, if you don’t think you’ll have the mental and physical bandwidth to turn advice into action, don’t ask for advice. And definitely, don’t ask for mentorship. It’s not worth your time or theirs.

As a footnote to myself and to others who may be seeking advice, even with this mindset, there’s no silver bullet. Be curious. Be mindful. And, be creative. My favorite creative ‘ask’ so far is “I will pay you to work for you”.

And to my first mentor, Happy Birthday!

Photo by Juan Pablo Rodriguez on Unsplash

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#unfiltered #7 Words are Food – Having Empathy, Job Resources Now, Letting Staff Go, and Perspective Shifts

words are food, empathy

I jumped on a call with my good buddy, incredible founder and one of the most magnanimous people that I know, Mike, not too long ago. And no, he did not pay me to say that. As always, we nerded about everything on the face of this planet, but one thing in particular stood out to me. And inevitably manifested into the foundation of this #unfiltered post. He said, just 3 words:

“Words are food.”

The more we delved into this rabbit hole, the more robust the metaphor began. But for the sake of not running your ear off, I’ll cover just one facet of our parallel.

Compliments are sweets. They’re great in moderation, but too many give you cavities. They wrap up a great meal, but you cannot live your life only indulging in compliments. On the other hand, constructive criticism are your vegetables. They may not taste the best, but they’re healthy for you. And a healthy diet should consist of mostly fruits and veggies. Yes, brussel sprouts and eggplants too. Of course, it’s important to note that blatant criticism, like “You suck” or “You’re dumb” is garbage. They neither taste good nor are they healthy for you. You can smell it from miles away. So just steer clear.

After all, you are what you eat. 😀

Empathy in Words

In the past 4 months, we are all going through a transitory stage in our lives – some more drastic than others. Some of us have experienced the deaths of loved ones. Some, a test of relationship integrity. Others, career shifts and a change in household income. For those of you who have been affected by the job market, my friend passed me this resource which I hope you’ll find use in honing your job search. Anecdotally, it seems pretty accurate.

And almost everyone, a dietary change and restriction, due to the market’s supply and demand. And it’s more important a time than any (not that you shouldn’t when the curve flattens and the markets recover), be empathetic.

Be kind – with your actions and your words. In these times, it’s so easy to be caught up in what’s not going right in your life, but you’re not alone. You never are.

Empathy in Business Now

Although this applies to so many different aspects of our lives, I’ve found its pertinence on the business front recently. When the focus of businesses now is on cash preservation rather than growth, which I’ve alluded to in previous posts (1. cash in private markets, 2. heeding advice , 3. brand as a moat), aggressive decisions can be tough. As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once.

Here are some examples of said (preemptive) decisions I’ve seen from founders so far:

  • Reallocating 30% of the company budget to the core business from expansion and venture bets (70-20-10 rule of thumb to 100-0-0)
  • 50% cut to CEO salary, 10% cut to management, 5% from everyone else, to try to minimize layoffs
  • 100% cut to founder(s)’ salary, 35% cut to management, everyone else keeps theirs the same, while offering healthcare benefits for temporary workers/contractors

The conclusion for some founders may reach the point of laying off people who followed you believing in your dream. You can check out Mark Suster‘s, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures, rubric for questions you need to consider in empathetic moments of business decisiveness.

Empathy won’t change decisions. The tough, but true remarks are your vegetables. People will still have to eat them, but be understanding of where the people eating the food you cooked up are coming from. Rather than boil your brussel sprouts, offer crispy ones with a soy glaze, a little heat, and a layer of bonito flakes.

Perspectives Forward

Recently, I had the fortune of connecting with a founder whose parents were refugee who found sanctuary in the states. She put things wonderfully into perspective, when comparing the current situation to the one she was familiar with as a child.

“There are 2 camps of refugees: (1) those who want things to go back to the way they were before, and (2) those who move forward knowing that life will never return to the ‘normal’ they once knew.

“And those who progress forward are those who believe in the latter.”

When the dust settles after all of this, life won’t ever be the same as it was 4 months ago. The hospitality, transportation, travel, and service industries, just to name a few, will irrevocably change. You friends and family may have lost dear ones.

Alas, I’m an optimist. And I know that we’re going to come out stronger than we were when we went in. We’re going to have to get used to a new diet. I dare say, even a new vernacular.

#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

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Brand as a Moat

startup brand, moat, defense, defensibility
Photo by Keith Johnston on Unsplash

What is the underlying notion that makes this product work?

It’s the question that almost every investor, especially early-stage startup investor, tries to answer when they’re entertaining potential investments. Some close cousins include:

  • What social, economic, or political trend is enabling this technology/business to work?
  • Why will people want to continue using this product? Consciously? Subconsciously? How much will they regret not being able to use this product?
  • Why is this idea crazy good, and not just crazy?
  • Is there a predictable road to traction? Product-market fit? $1M ARR? etc.
  • Is this a scalable business?

Needless to say, when I chat with founders, their business’s defensibility often comes up. Every business – small or large – needs to be defensible. Grandma’s cookies are just that good ’cause of that ‘secret’ brown butter element. Or Sally’s lemonade stand sells better than her neighbor’s down the street since she can keep her drinks cool for longer. Just like every good medieval castle has a moat, possibly filled with alligators, every good business has to have that one (or many) unfair advantage, as they call it in B-school. Not that I ever went, but I’ve heard from friends and professors who have. And this is even more true if you want to build a scalable business.

Those who have gone generally claim that their moat is their experience at X Fortune 500 company. Those who have a technical background often claim that their moat is their IP – patents owned and pending. Neither are wrong. And frankly, there are a multitude of factors that come into play when arguing for a business’s defensibility. And most of the times, it’s a permutation of the above and more. But the purpose of this post is to focus on an often discounted notion of brand as a moat. Both the company brand and the personal brand.

Disclaimer:

I should mention that before you even consider your business’s defensibility, and subsequently, brand, first, make a damn good product. I’ve seen too many founders take that leap of faith before they even have a product. They pitch the dream of them making a better world – the company vision – before they even figure out the first steps they need to take to get there.

The only ‘exception’ to this rule, at least from a fundraising and pre-PMF perspective, is if you have an amazingly robust personal brand. Though that may help with early traction, it won’t be enough to sustain a scalable business in the long run.

The startup brand

Your startup’s brand is a collective composed of the:

  • Company mission,
  • Company vision,
  • Internal culture,
  • And, the openness and responsiveness of the team.

The vision is that ultimate dream. The mission is what you’ll do now to get to that dream. Back in college, someone I really respect put it to me like this:

“The vision is the Sun. The mission is that ladder up. You can’t get to the Sun without building a ladder. If you only stare at it, you’ll eventually blind yourself. And if you just build a ladder, or else you might up on Mars instead, poorly equipped to survive there.”

Culture is something that you can set at the beginning, but know it’ll be an evolving beast with every new hire and every new incident. What you let happen defines the new culture. Although I share my thoughts in a post earlier this year, Ben Horowitz puts it into a much better perspective in his book, What You Do is Who You Are: How to Create your Business Culture. Quite a story-filled read, especially when you’re looking for something to do at home now.

And, the above three culminates into how your team acts.

  • Do your current customers/users feel like their concerns are either addressed or at least, valued?
  • Do they feel they are a valued member of your community?
  • What is your customer satisfaction rate? NPS score?
  • How do you prioritize and act on customer feedback?
  • Are your users engaged? How do you reengage them, if they become inactive?
  • For apps, what are they saying on the App Store/Play Store?
  • And, how are new customers hearing about your product? What do they hear? What are their explicit and implicit assumptions when using your product?

Why it Matters

Together the 4 elements answer the fundamental questions:

  1. Why would a potentially great customer want to use your product?
  2. Why would a potentially great hire want to join your company?

In the past few months, many VCs have been shifting their investment focus from consumer and towards enterprise/SaaS. There’s the argument that consumers are (1) more expensive to acquire (increasing CAC; the average number of apps a person downloads a day is zero), and (2) harder to retain. (For a more in-depth explanation, I would recommend you to check out the “Consumer App Conundrum” section here.) Aka, it’s more competitive than ever in the consumer markets. When we get closer to perfect competition over a saturated market seeking attention, having a great product just isn’t enough anymore. When some of the most active and vocal consumers happen to be people on the younger spectrum (millennials and Gen Zs), to fight for their attention, you need a brand that resonates with them on causes they care about – whether it’s diversity or climate change or another social cause.

We see this notion affecting two other verticals: the public sector and enterprise.

  • The privatization of X (let X be education, healthcare, transportation, etc. for all that were empirically public sector functions)
  • The consumerization of enterprise

For the purpose of this piece, let’s look at the consumerization of enterprise. What does that mean? Before enterprise sales worked from a top-down approach. A founder of an enterprise/SaaS startup pitches to a senior executive at a Fortune 500 (or similar) company. And the executive makes the call and the budget allocation towards their team’s usage of said product.

Now, many startups/companies, like Slack, Trello, Lever, and Soapbox, are taking the bottom-up approach, garnering brand loyalty among the people who will be/are using the product itself. And I predict that’ll be so in the near future for Superhuman, the fastest email client, and Woven, my favorite calendar app, as well. After all, progress happens at the most junior level. If you take it in relation to a tech startup of 200 in its growth phase, the founders or executives can make a plan and set deadlines. But if your most junior developer isn’t working on it, the whole business halts to a stop. All this makes me quite bullish on products in the low-code/no-code space, as well as in towards the future of work.

Moreover, this has led enterprise products to be heavily personalized, constantly updating, and has paved the way to multi-modal business models (i.e. subscription and pay-per-use). All this maximizes user satisfaction, which in turn affects their productivity, and transitively, the business flow.

Although the job market looks wildly different now than it did 3 months ago, when I assume the average founder is looking for cash preservation over growth, you still should be cognizant about the latter going forward.

Your Personal Brand

Your personal brand as a founder, or just as a professional, really matters. If you are a founder or thinking about becoming one, start building a public voice. Get people excited about you and what you’re all about.

Why?

Personal brands are extremely scalable and have built-in virality. You put one post out. Some percent of your followers engage with your content by liking or commenting. Then either by social media’s algorithms or by their innate excitement, they’ll share your content with their friends. Subsequently, new folks discover you and your content. And this becomes a virtuous loop, or network effects, as we call it, that helps get you scalable traction. This is why celebrities, like Dr. Dre and Maisie Williams, and their ventures garner quite a bit of traction among consumers and among investors. This is also why influencer marketing has been so bullish over the past few years.

At some point in your company’s lifespan, your personal brand will become the company brand. And that’ll become either shining beacon or the downfall of your company. More than just the followers you have on social media and in public, you are judged by everyone constantly on your aptitude and behaviors. How open, conscientious, agreeable, extroverted, and neurotic are you? (Yes, I took the 5 traits from the Big 5/OCEAN test.) Each and more have an impact on your personal brand. If we look at the culture behind Facebook, we see how large of an imprint Zuckerberg has on it. For Apple, Jobs.

In closing

The best thing about brands as a moat is that it’s effectively free! But both take years of work in building. As someone on the investing side, I love stellar brands. And it’s one of the elements of a business I weigh heavily on for its potentiality in network effects, summarized in the “Why you?” component of my NTY investment thesis (why Now, why This, why You).

Hmmmm, now thinking about it, personal brand may be the biggest reason I’ve been changing my handwashing habits in the past week… after watching Gordon Ramsay, Alton Brown, and Conan O’Brien‘s tutorials on it.

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#unfiltered #3 Plan Bs – Should we have them?

I woke up today with a thought that’s been gnawing at me for years now. Why do we have backup plans – Plan Bs, Plan Cs, etc? Does it inhibit our drive? Or readily prepare us for the worst? At what point are we sacrificing our commitment for safety?

When I started this blog, my writing mentor recommended that I have 10 pieces written and ready before I launch my blog. And I did exactly that. All cards out, I still have 8 of my pieces saved in my backlogs, which as you have already deducted, I’ve used 2 of my pieces already. Why? My mentor told me that, in my commitment to publish content weekly, I will indubitably have dry spells – dry weeks. And I did… twice. So, I regressed to my lowest common denominator and pulled something out of my archives. But during those two weeks, it helped me stay in my comfort zone. That instead of fighting writer’s block (if such a thing exists), I chose to run from it.

Part of the reason I started this #unfiltered series is to help me be content with content. I am guilty of 8/10 times second-guessing my way out of doing something. If I contemplate over something long enough, I’ll realize fears that I never thought possible, and opt for the safer option – not doing it at all.

From when we were young, we’re taught to always prepare backup options. When applying to colleges, we’re told to apply to our 2-3 reach schools, and 10-15 other schools we’re confident about getting into. When applying to jobs, one of my hometown neighbors, 2 years my senior, advised me to apply to 200 jobs, expect 10-20 interviews, another 3-5 for final rounds, and 1-2 offers to choose from. Effectively, asking me to apply to 198 backup alternatives.

I get it. As the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers. Both high school and my early years of college have drilled that saying into me – by my peers and by my teachers.

A part of me hates it, but a part of me realizes the truth in there. I saw that circumstances played an even larger role for my friends and peers who:

  • are going through tough times in this pandemic and economic downturn,
  • (whose) parents came from a lower income bracket,
  • are POC (people of color),
  • are female,
  • are/were open about their different sexual orientations,
  • didn’t graduate from a 4-year college,
  • lost limbs or appendages due to accidents or conflict,
  • are/were in debt,
  • and much more.

Half a decade back when I set out to meet one new person that drew my insatiable curiosity a week, I realized I’m a goddamn privileged person living in the 21st century. I’m a perfectly healthy, heterosexual Asian male who graduated from a 4-year university. If all hell breaks loose and my net worth goes to absolute zero, I have my parents’ home to go back to and a room and bed to call my own. And as a full disclaimer, the fact I’m contemplating this question in the first place means I’m privileged enough to do so.

And because I’ve had the liberty to do so, I realized that my greatest personal achievements came from when I didn’t give myself the option of a Plan B. For the people I reached out to and am in touch with above my weight class, I either have given it my all or was prepared to do so. For swimming, I treated each competition as my last, meaning I either gave it my all or nothing. And during more nights than I can count, I beat myself up over my inability to reach a milestone.

Yet, now in the land of venture, we learn to hedge our bets and come up with contingency plans. We learn once again to diversify our portfolio, and not put all eggs in one basket. Does that lead to why many investors fundamentally don’t have the conviction to lead deals?

On the founding side, you have it almost flipped. When you are trying to make ends meet, there will be times you have to take that one option and go all in. And you can’t let go until you do everything you can to make it a reality. When you sit in a position of privilege, you can have several contingency plans to hedge your bets. Ben Horowitz, author, founder, and investor, illustrated the dichotomy in his piece (and one of my favorites) about peacetime and wartime CEOs. There’s a part of me that strives to find that sense of urgency, like a wartime CEO. And go all in. Maybe this pandemic is the test where I can find where my values really lie.

To be frank, I haven’t come up with a conclusion to the dilemma. For now, I can only hypothesis-test and keep good track of the data that comes my way. But, so far, I can say that one’s tolerance for risk is positively correlated with one’s free cash flow.

#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups!

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A Small Nuance with Early Growth Numbers

startup growth
Photo by Ales Me on Unsplash

My friend, Rouhin, sent me this post by a rather angry fellow, which he and I both had a good chuckle out of, yesterday about how VC is a scam. In one part about startup growth, the author writes that VCs only care about businesses that double its customer base.

The author’s argument isn’t completely unfounded. And it’s something that’s given the industry as a whole a bad rap. True, growth and scalability are vital to us. That’s how funds make back their capital and then some. With the changing landscape making it harder to discern the signal from the noise, VCs are looking for moonshots. The earlier the stage, the more this ROI multiple matters. Ranging from 100x in capital allocation before the seed stage to 10x when growth capital is involved. But in a more nuanced manner, investors care not just about “doubling”, unilaterally, but the last time a business doubles. We care less if a lemonade stand doubles from 2 to 4 customers, than when a lemonade corporation doubles from 200 to 400 million customers, or rather bottles, for a more accurate metric.

After early startup growth

Of course, in a utopia, no businesses ever plateau in its logistical curve – best described as it nears its total TAM. That’s why businesses past Series B, into growth, start looking into adjacent markets to capitalize on. For example, Reid Hoffman‘s, co-founder of LinkedIn, now investor at Greylock, rule of thumb for breaking down your budget (arguably effort as well) once you reach that stage is:

  • 70% core business
  • 20% business expansion – adjacent markets that your team can tackle with your existing resources/product
  • 10% venture bets – product offerings/features that will benefit your core product in the longer run

And, the goal is to convert venture bets into expansionary projects, and expansionary projects to your core business.

Simply put, as VCs, we care about growth rates after a certain threshold. That threshold varies per firm, per individual. If it’s a consumer app, it could be 1,000 users or 10,000 users. And only after that threshold, do we entertain the Rule of 40, or the minimum growth of 30% MoM. Realistically, most scalable businesses won’t be growing astronomically from D1. (Though if you are, we need to talk!) The J-curve, or hockey stick curve, is what we find most of the time.

The Metrics

In a broader scope, at the early stage, before the critical point, I’m less concerned with you doubling your user base or revenue, but the time it takes for your business to double every single time.

From a strictly acquisition perspective, take day 1 (D1) of your launch as the principal number. Run on a logarithmic base 2 regression, how much time does it take for your users (or revenue) to double? Is your growth factor nearing 1.0, meaning your growth is slowing and your adoption curve is potentially going to plateau?

Growth Factor = Δ(# of new users today)/Δ(# of new users yesterday) > 1.0

Why 1.0? It suggests that you could be nearing an inflection point when your exponential graph start flattening out. Or if you’re already at 1.0 or less, you’re not growing as “exponentially” as you would like, unless you change strategies. Similarly, investors are looking for:

ΔGrowth Factor > 0

Feel to replace the base log function with any other base, as the fundamentals still hold. For example, base 10, if you’re calculating how long it takes you to 10x. Under the same assumptions, you can track your early interest pre-traction, via a waitlist signup, similarly.

While in this new pandemic climate (which we can admittedly also evaluate from a growth standpoint), juggernauts are forced to take a step back and reevaluate their options, including their workforce, providing new opportunities and fresh eyes on the gig economy, future of work, delivery services, telehealth, and more. Stay safe, and stay cracking!

Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups!

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#unfiltered #0 The Intro

Today, I read a 2017 piece on Nylon about advice from black writers to black writers. And there was one particular quote that caught my eye.

“Don’t edit while writing a draft or else you never finish.” – Terry McMillan

I can’t speak for the writing industry as a whole; I can’t even speak for my friends who are writers. Didn’t ask. But I can speak for myself. For this blog. Admittedly, 70% of all pieces I start writing, I don’t finish. And quite honestly, I almost hate that about myself. Writing for eyes that are more than my own has turned me into a perfectionist. The very thing I once swore to not become.

So, I’m going to try an experiment. More so for myself, in hopes of reducing the friction for me to write more. Every so often, I will post something I will title as “#unfiltered”. It’ll be less of a well-constructed thesis or methodical breakdown, but more of a writing to help me think. In sum, it’ll be a brain barf. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity. Don’t feel obligated to read it. In fact, if you don’t like brain barfs, don’t click on any of them, prefaced by its own #spoileralert. But if you do like unfiltered commentary and my rough thoughts, stay tuned. 😀

#unfiltered. A series about unfiltered thoughts.

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The Marketplace of Startups

books about startups

Over the past decade, stretching its roots to the dot-com boom, there have been more dialogue and literature around entrepreneurship. In a sense, founding a business is easier than it’s ever been. But like all things in life, there’s a bit more nuance to it. So, what’s the state of startups right now?

Lower Barriers to Entry

A number of factors have promoted such a trend:

  • There are an increasing number of resources online and offline. Online courses and ed-tech platforms. Fellowships and acceleration/incubation programs. Investor office hours and founder talks. YouTube videos, online newsletters, and podcasts.
  • The low-code/no-code movement is also helping bridge that knowledge gap for the average person. Moreover, making it easier for non-experts to be experts.
  • The gig economy have created a fascinating space for solopreneurship to be more accessible to more geographies.

Demand (by consumers and investors) fuels supply of startups, through knowledge and resource sharing. Likewise, the supply of startups, especially in nascent markets, fuels demand in new verticals. So, the ecosystem becomes self-perpetuating on a positive feedback loop. As Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO, once said:

“There are only two ways I know of to make money – bundling and unbundling.”

BundlingUnbundling
Market MaturityMarket Nascency
HorizontalizationVerticalization
BreadthDepth
Execution Risk
Bias		Market/Tech Risk
Bias

Right now, we’re at a stage of startup market nascency, unbundling the knowledge gap between the great and the average founder. This might seem counter-intuitive. After all, there’s so much discourse on the subject. There’s a good chance that you know someone who is or have thought about starting a business. But, I don’t believe we’re even close to a global maximum in entrepreneurship. Why?

  1. Valuations are continuing to rise.
  2. Great founders are still scarce.
startup growth
Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash

Valuations are shooting up

Valuations are still on the rise. Six years back, $250K was enough runway for our business to last until product-market fit. Now, a typical seed round ranges from $500K-$2M. A decade ago, $500M was enough to IPO with; now it only warrants a late-stage funding round. By capitalistic economic theory, when a market reaches saturation, aka perfect competition, profit margins regress to zero. Not only are there still profits to be made, but more people are jumping into the investing side of the business.

Yes, increasing valuations are also a function of FOMO (fear of missing out), discovery checks (<0.5% of VC fund size), super duper low interest rates (causing massive sums of capital to surge in chase yields), and non-traditional venture investors entering as players in the game (PE, hedge funds, other accredited investors, (equity) crowdfunding platforms). It would be one thing if they came and left as a result of a (near) zero sum game. But they’re here to stay. Here’s a mini case study. Even after the 2018 drop in Bitcoin, venture investors are still bullish on its potential. In fact, there are now more and more specialized funds to invest in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Last year, a16z, one of the largest and trendsetting VC players, switched from a VC to an RIA (registered investment advisor), to broaden its scope into crypto/blockchain.

Great founders are scarce

“The only uncrowded market is great. There’s always a fucking market for great.”

– Tim Ferriss, podcaster, author, but also notably, an investor and advisor for companies, like Facebook, Uber, Automattic and more

Even if founders now have the tools to do so, it doesn’t mean they’ll hit their ambitious milestones. For VCs, it only gets harder to discern the signal from the noise. Fundamentally, there’s a significant knowledge delta – a permutation of misinformation and resource misallocation – in the market between founders and investors, and between average founders and great founders.

The Culinary Analogy

Here’s an analogy. 30 years prior, food media was still nascent. Food Network had yet to be founded in 1993. The average cook resorted to grandma’s recipe (and maybe also Cory’s from across the street). There was quite a bit of variability into the quality of most home-cooked dishes. And most professional chefs were characteristically male. Fast forward to now, food media has become more prevalent in society. I can jump on to Food Network or YouTube any time to learn recipes and cooking tips. Recipes are easily searchable online. Pro chefs, like Gordon Ramsay, Thomas Keller, and Alice Waters, teach full courses on Masterclass, covering every range of the culinary arts.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Has it made the average cook more knowledgeable? Yes. I have friends who are talking about how long a meat should sous vide for before searing or the ratio of egg whites to egg yolks in pasta. Not gonna lie; I love it! I’ll probably end up posting a post soon on what I learned from culinary mentors, friends, and myself soon.

Is there still a disparity between the average cook and a world-class chef? Hell ya! Realistically I won’t ever amount to Wolfgang Puck or Grant Achatz, but I do know that I shouldn’t deep fry with extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) ’cause of its low smoke point.

Great businesses are scarcer

The same is true for entrepreneurship. There are definitely more startups out there, but there hasn’t been a significant shift in the number of great startups. And the increase in business tools has arguably increased the difficulty to find business/product defensibility. It’s leveled the playing field and, simultaneously, raised the bar. So yes, it’s easier to start a business; it’s much harder to retain and scale a business.

It’s no longer enough to have an open/closed beta with just an MVP. What startups need now is an MLP (minimum lovable product). Let’s take the consumer app market as an example.

The Consumer App Conundrum

Acquiring consumers has gotten comparatively easier. Paid growth, virality, and SEO tactics are scalable with capital. More and more of the population have been conditioned to notice and try new products and trends, partly as a function of the influencer economy. But retaining them is a different story.

So, consumers have become:

  1. More expensive to acquire than ever before. Not only are customer acquisition costs (CAC) increasing, with smaller lifetime values (LTV), but your biggest competitors are often not directly in your sector. Netflix and YouTube has created a culture of binge-watching that previously never existed. And since every person has a finite 24 hours in a day, your startup growth is directly cutting into another business’s market share on a consumer’s time.
  2. And, harder to retain. It’s great that there’s a wide range of consumer apps out there right now. The App Store and Play Store are more populated than they’ve ever been. But churn has also higher now than I’ve seen before. Although adoption curves have been climbing, reactivation and engagement curves often fall short of expectations, while inactive curves in most startups climb sooner than anticipated. Many early stage ventures I see have decent total account numbers (10-30K, depending on the stage), but a mere 10-15% DAU/MAU (assuming this is a core metric). In fact, many consumers don’t even use the app they downloaded on Day 2.

Luckily, this whole startup battlefield works in favor of consumers. More competition, better features, better prices. 🙂

So… what happens now?

It comes down to two main questions for early-stage founders:

  1. Do you have a predictable/sensible plan to your next milestone? To scalability?
    • Are you optimizing for adoption, as well as retention and engagement?
      • With so many tools for acquisition hacks, growth is relatively easy to capture. Retention and engagement aren’t. And in engagement, outside of purely measuring for frequency (i.e. DAU/MAU), are you also measuring on time spent with each product interaction?
    • How are you going to capture network effects? What’s sticky?
      • Viral loops occur when there’s already a baseline of engagement. So how do you meaningfully optimize for engagement?
    • From a bottom-up approach (rather than top-down by taking percentages of the larger market), how are you going to convert your customers?
    • How do you measure product-market fit?
  2. What meaningful metric are you measuring/optimizing?
    • Why is it important?
    • What do you know (that makes money) that everyone else is either overlooking or severely underestimating?
    • What are you optimizing for that others’ (especially your biggest competitors) cannot?
      • Every business optimizes for certain metrics. That have a set budget used to optimize for those metrics. And because of that, they are unable to prioritize optimizing others. So, can you measure it better in a way that’ll hold off competition until you reach network effects/virality?

Building a scalable business is definitely harder. And to become the 10 startups a year that really matter is even more so. By the numbers, less likely than lightning striking you. In my opinion, that just makes trying to find your secret sauce all the more exciting!

If you think you got it or are close to getting it, I’d love to chat!

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Part-time vs. Full-time Founders

Over the weekend, my friend and I were chatting about the next steps in her career. After spending quite some time ironing out a startup idea she wants to pursue, she was at a crossroads. Should she leave her 9-to-5 and pursue this idea full-time, or should she continue to test out her idea and keep her full-time job?

Due to my involvement with the 1517 Fund and since some of my good friends happen to be college dropouts, I spend quite a bit of time with folks who have or are thinking about pursuing their startup business after dropping out. This is no less true with 9-to-5ers. And some who are still the sole breadwinner of their family. Don’t get me wrong. I love the attention, social passion, literature and discourse around entrepreneurship. But I think many people are jumping the gun.

Ten years back, admittedly off of the 2008 crisis, the conversations were entirely different. When I ask my younger cousins or my friends’ younger siblings, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” They say things like “run my own business”, “be a YouTuber”, and most surprisingly, “be a freelancer”. From 12-yr olds, it’s impressive that freelancing is already part of their vocabulary. It’s an astounding heuristic for how far the gig economy has come.

Moreover, media has also built this narrative championing the college dropout. Steve Jobs and Apple. Bill Gates and Microsoft. And, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. There’s nothing wrong in leaving your former occupation or education to start something new. But not before you have a solid proof of concept, or at least external validation beyond your friends, family and co-workers. After all, Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard not to start Facebook, but because Facebook was already taking off.

Honing the Idea

The inherent nature of entrepreneurship is risk. As an entrepreneur (and as an investor), the goal should always be to de-risk your venture – to make calculated bets. To cap your downside.

Marc Benioff started his idea of a platform-as-a-service in March 1999. Before Marc Benioff took his idea of SaaS full-time, he spent time at Oracle with his mentor, Larry Ellison, honing this thesis and business idea. When he was finally ready 4 months later, he left on good terms. Those terms were put to the test, when in Salesforce’s early days, VCs were shy to put in their dollar on the cap table. But, his relationship he had built with Larry ended up giving him the runway he needed to build his team and product.

Something that’s, unfortunately, rarely talked about in Silicon Valley and the world of startups is patience. We’ve gotten used to hearing “move fast and break things”. Many founders are taught to give themselves a 10-20% margin of error. What started off as a valuable heuristic grew into an increase in quantity of experiments, but decrease in quality of experiments. Founders were throwing a barrage of punches, where many carried no weight behind them. No time spent contemplating why the punch didn’t hit its mark. And subsequently, founders building on the frontlines of revolution fight to be the first to market, but not first to product-market fit. Founders fight hell or high water to launch their MVP, but not an MLP, as Jiaona Zhang of WeWork puts it.

In the words of the one who pioneered the idea of platform-as-a-service,

The more transformative your idea is, the more patience you’ll need to make it happen.”

– Marc Benioff

As one who sits on the other side of the table, our job is to help founders ask more precise questions – and often, the tough questions. We act more as godmothers and godfathers of you and your babies, but we can’t do the job for you.

The “Tough” Questions

To early founders, aspiring founders, and my friends at the crossroads, here is my playbook:

  • What partnerships can/will make it easier for you to go-to-market? To product-market fit? To scalability?
  • What questions can you ask to better test product feasibility?
  • How can you partner with people to ask (and test) better questions?
  • What is your calculus that’ll help you systematically test your assumptions?
  • Do you have enough cash flow to sustain you (and your dependents) for the next 2 years to test these assumptions?

Simultaneously, it’s also to important to consider the flip side:

  • What partnerships (or lack thereof) make your bets more risky?
  • How can you limit them? Eliminate them?

And in sum, these questions will help you map out:

At this point in your career, does part-time or full-time help you better optimize yourself for reaching my next milestone?

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