This one was inspired by Harry Stebbings’ episode with Dan Siroker that I tuned into earlier this week. In it, Dan describes his most memorable VC meeting, which happened to be with Peter Fenton at Benchmark. Where Peter asks Dan, “Dan, what’s gonna get you excited to be at this business in five years?”
In sum, what are your future motivations going to look like? Nine out of ten times, it’s likely not going to be exactly the same as the one today. And given that it will look differently, can you still stay true to the North Star of this business as you do today? What’s gonna change? What’s gonna stay the same?
For the most part, the people and the problem space are likely to stay the same. The product may look quite different though. And it’s highly likely that in five years, you would have found product-market fit. So, that’s Act I. Is it the advent of the next chapter of what your company could look like that gets you excited? Hell it might be. You can then tackle a bigger problem. A larger market. An adjacent market. Or what Bangaly Kaba calls the adjacent users. For some founders, it’s the market they always wanted to tackle, but couldn’t when they realized their beachhead market must be something else.
While I can’t speak for everyone, here are some of the answers I’ve personally come to like over the years. From either founders or fund managers:
- There is no other industry that offers the same velocity of learning that this one provides.
- I want my company’s legacy to outlive my own. And I want to empower the next generation of builders with the resources and the power to solve the greatest needs of our generation.
- I want to go home and tell my my wife/husband/kids that I lived my fullest life today. And this is what gives me endless joy.
- Act I was solving a problem I faced. Act II is solving a problem others face in our space.
- Getting on the phone with a customer and hearing how much our product changed their lives makes me really happy.
- If I’m not regularly putting the firm’s reputation on the line, we’re not trying hard enough. And I live for that challenge.
- I want to build a world where people don’t settle for “It is what it is.”
- No one else is solving the problem I want to solve in the way that I believe it should be solved.
- I want to continue to be a superhero, a role model, for my daughter/son.
In many ways, it’s quite similar to the question I ask first-time GPs or aspiring GPs about their motivation.
Things in venture exist on long time horizons. For founders, it’s at least 7-9 years before an exit. For fund managers, it’s 10-15 years per fund. And that’s just a single fund. Anything more is longer. So in order to compete against the very best, you need to have long time horizons. You must have the resolve to stay the course. As Kevin Kelly says, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
Along the same vein, there’s also a Jeff Bezos quote I really like: “If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people… Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue.”
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
The DGQ series is a series dedicated to my process of question discovery and execution. When curiosity is the why, DGQ is the how. It’s an inside scoop of what goes on in my noggin’. My hope is that it offers some illumination to you, my readers, so you can tackle the world and build relationships with my best tools at your disposal. It also happens to stand for damn good questions, or dumb and garbled questions. I’ll let you decide which it falls under.
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The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.