One of my favorite sections in Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table (H/T to Rishi and Arpan from Garuda who not only gifted me that book, but also one of the nicest bookmarks I own today) is when he talks about whelmers.
“I ask our managers to weigh one other critical factor as they handicap the prospect. Do they believe the candidate has the capacity to become one of the top three performers on our team in his or her job category? If people cannot ever develop into one of our top three cooks, servers, managers, or maître d’s, why would we hire them? How will they help us improve and become champions? It’s pretty easy to spot an overwhelmingly strong candidate or even an underwhelmingly weak candidate. It’s the ‘whelming’ candidate you must avoid at all costs, because that’s the one who can and will do your organization the most long-lasting harm. Overwhelmers earn you ravers. Underwhelmers either leave on their own or are terminated. Whelmers, sadly, are like a stubborn stain you can’t get out of the carpet. They infuse an organization and its with mediocrity; they’re comfortable, and so they never leave; and, frustratingly, they never do anything that rises to the level of getting them promoted or sinks to the level of getting them fired. And because you either can’t or don’t fire them, you and they conspire to send a dangerous message to your staff and guests and ‘average’ is acceptable.”
In an industry where everyone is incredible — in many ways, you can’t, or at least it’s really hard to, be a GP without being overwhelming in your past in one way or another… INcredible becomes credible. So, it’s quite hard when you have a limited sample size to know who is incredible among the already incredible.
Almost everyone today is overqualified for the job, compared to the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, when most were underqualified.
So, unless you’ve been an LP, how do you know if you’re overwhelming versus just whelming?
- LPs who have seen at least 200 funds in the last 2-4 years tell you you’re the “only” one who is pursuing this strategy
- They have large enough of a sample size to make an assessment. While not perfect, it’s enough to be in rarified air.
- You’ve been to the major LP/GP conferences (i.e. RAISE, Bridge, All Raise, SuperReturn / SuperVenture, Upfront Summit, Milken, EMC Summit, etc.) and have seen how other GPs pitch where you personally have a sample size of at least 100.
- Even better, if you’ve been to the Demo Days or showcases for Coolwater, Recast, VC Lab, just to name a few, and you’ve seen other GP’s pitches
- Do note what GPs say on podcasts are usually (in my experience) what they pitch to LPs.
- You can cold email LPs and they’ll respond.
- LPs are notoriously closed off to cold emails. As an institution that makes only 1-3 new investments per year in an asset class, it doesn’t make sense for them to keep the doors open as much as venture investors do for founders. And even then, a lot of VCs are also averse to cold emails. That said, if you’re a GP that consistently gets meetings booked from cold emails, you might have something special.
- More often than not, admittedly, this is due to a strong brand, either via media, personal brand, strong returns, or word of mouth.
- Important to note that you’re never as good as they say you are, but you’re also never as bad as they say you are.
- When you are THE first call exited founders ($100M+ exits) make when they’re brainstorming their next company
- Them needing a sparring partner on their next career move also counts.
- You getting invited to whatever large event they host next does not. Including birthday parties, weddings, etc. As much as it feels good to me, you’re not overwhelming. If it puts things into perspective, I get invited to these, and I know I’m not an “overwhelming” venture investor.
- Also if you’re the fifth person they call, you’re just “whelming.”
- You are cited by other investors and founders alike as the source material of an ideology or a framework.
- Think Marc Andreessen’s “Software is eating the world” or Aileen Lee’s “unicorn” nomenclature or Mike Maples’ “Your fund size is your strategy” or all the Naval-isms.
- Not an investor (or at least I don’t know if he is), but Kevin Kelly is another great source of excellent soundbites.
- Different founders (or people in general) reach out to you consistently on topics that is not fundraising/them pitching you. In fact, they may never reach out to you on fundraising because you’re known for excellence in other areas.
- You have a memory like a steel trap. You quote books, passages, movies, lessons, anecdotes, stories, history, podcasts, presidential speeches from back in the day, and music in ways most people cannot fathom but make complete sense. You quote in ways where people wonder if you have photographic memory or a chip in your brain, but you actually don’t.
- This is more or less intellectually “overwhelming”, although overwhelming may not be the right terminology. But someone who is profusely well-read and cultured in a diverse amount of material. Think Da Vinci. Or maybe a modern-day equivalent, Patrick Collison, David Senra, or Ben and David on Acquired.
The one thing I won’t include on this list, while undeniably “overwhelming,” is intuition. People with phenomenal intuition are just different. Overwhelmingly different. But in the world of venture, the word intuition is often overused and has lost its true meaning. Many investors who bet well in hindsight attribute luck to intuition. And hell, the reason I’m not including it in the above list, is that many investors think they’re heavily intuitive, which in my experience usually means:
- They hate math. Spreadsheets and the like. In fact, they’re likely just to be bad at it.
- They hate diligence. The homework that’s actually required to be a great investor.
- If they’re pre-economic success, they’re often spinning a tale to us. Or worse, lying to themselves.
- If they’re post-economic success, there’s a good chance they have hindsight bias.
That said, there are a rare few number of times where I meet someone (often not an investor) and they’re able to deduce the person I am with a glance with very little other context. To me, that feels like magic. Something that very few have. But at the same time, I do believe can be trained.
Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash
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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.