Tag: quote

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The Letters and Passages #1 – Room by Emma Donoghue

Note: I don’t know how many of these book reactions I’ll write. I don’t know how frequently I’ll write these either. But I do know that when I do write one, it’ll have changed my life, my thoughts… me – in a meaningful way.

The Preface

My friend, an extremely well-read fiction purist, highly recommended this book to me, a non-fiction purist, one beautiful Monday evening. She said if there was only one book I had to read when it came to fiction, it had to be this one. I asked her what it was about. She said only one word: “Perspective.”

Moreover, she prohibited me from doing any research online (as I like to do) or even reading the summary on the back cover. To date, it is the only book I’ve read not having done any homework on it whatsoever. And I’m glad I didn’t.

What I learned was much more than I could have ever hoped for. Throughout my read of Room, I had a constant reminder of what Josh Waitzkin, author, chess champion, and martial arts champion, said February this year on Episode #412 of the Tim Ferriss Show:

“When I studied Tai Chi for a year, I thought I knew what I was doing. And I thought I was really started to understand it. But after 2 years, I realized everything I thought after a year was wrong. It was just wrong. But now I understood.

And then after 4 years, I realized everything I thought after 2 years was wrong. And he went on with this story and this pattern, but now I understood. And after 8 years, everything I thought after 4 years was wrong. And now I’ve been training for 16 years; everything I thought after 8 years was wrong. And now, I finally understand…

It’s easy to think we’re in the dark yesterday, but in the light today. But we’re in the dark today too.”

Room by Emma Donoghue

I will warn that in this section, I will reveal some light spoilers. If you want to save that experience for yourself, feel free to jump to the epilogue of this post.

“‘Scared is what you’re feeling,’ says Ma, ‘but brave is what you’re doing.'” (116)

The first 100 pages were cute and endearing. Slowly, but surely, over the course of a week, I learned of the world inside an 11-by-11-foot space, from the eyes, ears, and the imagination of young Jack. To me, they were slow. Yet, each time Jack’s Ma shared one additional layer of perspective – another reference point, another anchor – I felt thrown back into square one. Seeing the 11-by-11 world again in new eyes.

The next 100 pages happened before I had a chance to blink. All before the hour was up. Yet only a mere 48 hours passed in the timeline of Jack’s world.

The final 100 pages, for the first time, I began to contextualize Jack’s world to mine. How much I take for granted. The small things. The ephemeral nature of life. But also how quickly I, like much of the world, tend to jump to conclusions when given only a fraction of the bigger picture. The me was exemplified in all the other characters in these 100 pages.

It’s a beautiful story – one I didn’t think I’d like. 10 pages in. It was just another book. 20 pages. It was just another book. 30. 40. 50. And so on. But on page 82, it went from another book to THE book.

The Epilogue

Perspective. It’s something I think the world could always use a little more of. There’s 7.8 billion people on this planet. One of eight bodies in this solar system. One of many interstellar objects and phenomena out there.

I’m writing in one of 6909 languages used in the world today. A participant in one, maybe two, of over 3800 cultures in this world. Both I’m sure are underestimations. Yet, everyone’s living a life I seemingly know nothing about.

Once again, I’m reminded of the answer one of my high-schoolmates wrote in his college application. A brilliantly concise one, to the question: What is a problem that exists in the world right now?

He wrote: “Ignorance. I know nothing about it.”

While the book doesn’t aim to answer all your existential questions, it does shed light into the simplicities and complexities in our world. And how often we tend to overlook each. Taking each as granted.

The world is in turmoil these days. A revolution of emotions. A war on beliefs. We spend so much time speaking our thoughts. Yet, not as much time listening to others’. As someone in the intelligence world once told me, “The most effective kind of communication is listening, not speaking. And listening is not just hearing.” Hearing is just letting audible sound transmit through the air. Listening is paying attention to the words and the context that follow another’s intentions.

So, I’ll end with Ma’s words on page 217. “That’s why God gave you a mouth to breathe through.”

Room, by Emma Donoghue, a book that reminded me that in exhaling I often forget to inhale.

The Letters and Passages is a series where I share my raw thoughts on the books, letters, passages, and the literature I come across. Those that inspire me. Those that change my perspective. And those that resonate the most. So much so, you might realize that the headings are in violet rather than the usual cyan blue.

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Myths around Startups and Business Ideas

In a number of recent conversations with friends outside of venture and “aspiring entrepreneurs”, a couple myths, which I’m going to loosely define here as popular beliefs held by many people, were brought to my attention. 4 in particular.

  1. If I have a great idea and build it, it’ll sell itself.
  2. That idea/startup is over-hyped.
  3. The startup/venture capital landscape is over-saturated.
  4. If it doesn’t make sense to me, it’s not a good idea.

Quite fortuitously, a question on Quora also inspired this post and discussion.

If I have a great idea and build it, it’ll sell itself.

Unfortunately, most times, it won’t. As Reid Hoffman puts it: “A good product with great distribution will almost always beat a great product with poor distribution.” As a founder, you have to think like a salesperson (for enterprise/B2B businesses) or a marketer (for consumer/B2C businesses). People have to know about what you’re building. ’Cause frankly you could build the world’s best time machine in your basement, but if no one knows, it’s just a time machine in your basement. Probably a great story to tell for Hollywood one day (even then you still need people to find out), but not for a business.

That idea/startup is over-hyped.

I’ll be honest. This really isn’t a myth, more of a common saying.

Maybe so, at the cross-section in time in which you’re looking at it. But if you rewind a couple months or a year or 2 years ago, they were under-hyped. In fact, there’s a good chance no one cared. While everyone has a different technical definition of over- and under-hyped, by the numbers, time will tell if it’ll be a sustainable business or not. If it’s keeping north of 40% retention even 6 months after the hype, we’re in for a breadwinner.

Take Zoom, for example. Pre-COVID, if you asked any rational tech investor, “would you invest in Slack or Zoom?” Most would say Slack. Zoom existed, but many weren’t extremely bullish on it. Today, well, that may be a different story. As of this morning (Oct. 12, 2020), while I’m editing this post before the market opens, the stock price of Zoom is $492 (and same change). Approximately 343% higher than it was on March 17th, the first day of the Bay Area shelter-in-place. And, right now, the price of Slack is $31. Approximately 56% up from the beginning of quarantine.

Neither are startups anymore, but the analogy holds. Also, a lesson that predictions, even by experts, can be wrong.

The startup/venture capital landscape is over-saturated.

“There’s too much money being invested (wasted) on startups.”

From the outside, it may very well look that way. Every day, every week we see this startup gets funded for $X million or that startup gets funded for $YY million. According to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), $133 billion were invested into startups last year. Yet, it pales in comparison to the capital that’s traded in the public markets.

VC funds see thousands of startup pitches a year. Per partner (most funds 2–3 partners), they each invest in 3–5 per year (aka about once per quarter). Meaning >99% of startups that a single VC sees are not getting funded by them. That doesn’t mean 99% never get funded, but it’s just to illustrate that proportionally, capital isn’t being spent willy-nilly.

If we look at it from a macro-economic perspective, if we are reaching saturation in the startup market, we should be getting closer to perfect competition. And in a perfectly competitive market, profit margins are zero. The thing is profits aren’t nearing zero in the startup/venture capital market. In fact, though the median fund isn’t returning much on invested capital. A good fund is returning 3–5x. A great one >5x. And well, if you were in Chris Sacca’s first fund, which included Uber, Twitter, and more, 250x MOIC. That’s $250 returned on every $1 invested.

If it doesn’t make sense to me, it’s not a good idea.

Finding Product-Market Fit and “Idea-Market Fit”

Revolutionary ideas aren’t meant to conform. If an idea is truly ground-breaking, people have yet to be conditioned to think that a startup idea is great or not. As Andy Rachleff, co-founder of Wealthfront and Benchmark Capital, puts it: “you want to be right on the non-consensus.” Think Uber and Airbnb in 2008. If you asked me to jump in a stranger’s car to go somewhere then, I would have thought you were crazy. Same with living in a stranger’s home. I write more about being right on the non-consensus here and in this blog post.

Frankly, you may not be the target market. You’re not the customer that startup is serving. The constant reminder we, on the venture capital side of the table, have is to stop thinking that we are the core user for a product. Most products are not made for us. Equally, when a founder comes to us pre-traction and asks us “Is this a good idea?”, most of the time I don’t know. The numbers (will) prove if it’s a good idea or not. Unless I am their target audience, I don’t have a lot to weigh in on. I can only check, from least important to most important:

  1. How big is the market + growth rate
  2. Does the founder(s) have a unique insight into the industry that all the other players are overlooking or underestimating or don’t know at all? And will this insight keep incumbents at bay at least until this startup reaches product-market fit?
  3. How obsessed about the problem space is the founder/team, which is a proxy for grit and resilience in the longer run? And obsession is an early sign of (1) their current level of domain expertise/navigating the “idea maze”, and (2) and their potential to gain more expertise. If we take the equation for a line, y = mx + b. As early-stage investors, we invest in “m’s” not “b’s”.

In closing

While I know not everyone echoes these thoughts, hopefully, this post can provide more context to some of the entrepreneurial motions we’re seeing today. Of course, take it all with a grain of salt. I’m an optimist by nature and by function of my job. Just as a VC I respect told me when I first started 4 years back,

“If you’re going to pursue a career in venture, by nature of the job, you have to be an optimist.”

Happened to also be one of the VCs who shared his thoughts for my little research project on inspiration and frustration last week.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

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#unfiltered #30 Inspiration and Frustration – The Honest Answers From Some of the Most Resilient People Going through a World of Uncertainty

A few weeks ago, around the time I published Am I At My Best Right Now?, I started noticing more and more that my friends, colleagues, and people that I’ve met since were going through tough times. Two lost a family member. Some were laid off. Two were forced to leave this land I call home. Four broke up. Three burned out. Countless more told me they were stressed and/or depressed, and didn’t know how to escape this limbo. After I published that post, another handful of people also reached out and courageously shared the troubles they are going through now. How it’s been so hard to share with others. And yesterday, while editing this blog post, I found out that one of my high school friends had passed.

Inspiration and Frustration

During this time, I had a thought: Frustration is the absence of inspiration. There were many times in my own life when I was beating myself up because I couldn’t think of a solution. And a small percent of those times, I didn’t even bother to think of a solution since I was so engrossed in my frustration with myself.

In these unprecedented times and inspired by the conversations around me, I decided to show that we’re not alone. So, I asked people who I deeply respect and who could shed light as to what it means to be human. I asked just two questions, but they were only allowed to answer one of them:

  1. What is the one thing that inspires you so much that it makes everything else in life much easier to bear?
  2. What is stressing/frustrating you so much right now that it seems to invalidate everything else you’re doing?

In turn, they responded via email, text, or on a phone call. Of the 49 I asked, so far, 31 responded with their answers. 4 politely turned me down due to their busy schedules. Another one turned me down because she didn’t feel like she could offer value in her answer.

26 responded with what inspires them. 5 with what frustrates them. All of whom I know has been through adversity and back.

Admittedly, the hardest part about this study was how I was going to organize all these responses. Unlike the one about time allocation I did over a month ago, where I knew exactly how to organize the data before I even got all the responses, this one, I really didn’t know how to best illustrate the candor everyone shared. In fact, I would be doing a disservice to them, if reduced their honesty and courage to be vulnerable to mere numbers. So, in the end, below, I let everyone speak for themselves. Sometimes, simplicity is the best.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this blog post happen, including Brad Feld, Mars Aguirre, Shayan Mehdi, Thomas Owen, Chris Lyons, Mark Leon, Jamarr Lampart, Christen Nino De Guzman, Louis Q Tran, Sam Marelich, Dr. Kris Marsh, Quincy Huynh, DJ Welch, Jimmy Yue, and many, many more heroes who helped me and the world around us behind the curtains.

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How to Identify Market Opportunity and Recognize Market Inefficiencies

round gold colored pocket watch

I was raised a swimmer. From 4 years old, my parents sent me to take swimming classes for 2 primary reasons:

  1. Learn how to not drown.
  2. If we (my parents) are ever going to drown, you’re going to save us.*

*Note: I’d like to point out the irony is that both of parents know how to swim themselves. Not at a competitive stage, but enough to survive from drowning.

Oddly enough, I learned how to swim by drowning. Over the years, like many other children around me, on top of swimming, I also played ball in its various sizes and ran. And I learned that swimming and running are of the 2 purest forms of athleticism and exercise out there. There’s very little margin for error, if any. A tenth of a second is the difference between Olympic gold and not even qualifying for the semifinals. Because of that, in swimming, we’re taught to be efficient. We learned to maximize for our distance per stroke (DPS). And I believe in running, it’s distance per stride.

Efficiency. The ability to do more with less.

The market of efficiency

These days, getting from point A to B isn’t as difficult as it used to be. Cars made travelling miles easier. Planes, for hundreds to thousands of miles. Bikes and scooters, for last mile transportation – distances too close to drive, but take twice as long to walk. Outside of transportation, career development, information and skill acquisition have all seen massive developments not only in the last hundred years, but especially in the last 10 years. Online platforms, like Coursera, Masterclass, Google, and Wikipedia, helped us all shave off months, years, even generations of legwork and information acquisition. They made so many things more accessible.

Accessibility

Accessibility is platformitizing and democratizing information. What Yellow Pages did for services. Reddit for knowledge acquisition. Amazon for shopping. Google for information. And Food Network and food media did for cooks. The average person today is more knowledgeable about the culinary process and its accessories than someone two decades back. Laughable now, but 8 years ago, it’s how I learned not to burn frozen pizza. I could go on and on.

But, in the next ten years, accessibility may not be enough. Though there are many populations in this world who still have yet to access the knowledge I can readily find on my laptop, accessibility provides people with the tools, but not the means to use those tools effectively.

Ease

Ease does. Lower the barriers to entry and bundle the entire knowledge acquisition, or otherwise, what I would call onboarding, in an intuitive manner. Like what WordPress did for websites. Instagram for photos. Opendoor for home-buying/selling. TurboTax for, well, tax.

It’s a messy web of information out there. As economist Herbert A. Simon puts it:

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Here’s an easy way to tell which industries and processes lack ease. Find where people have created hacks to solve a problem.

  • Using multiple tools/software to solve a single problem;
  • Using a “temporary” solution to solve a repetitive problem. Like a basin to catch the rainwater that leaks through the roof;
  • A public forum, like Reddit or a Facebook group or multiple similar questions on Quora, where people share their “life hacks”.
  • A How-to YouTube video that has tens/hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views.

And to know if you hit the nail on the head, you’ve got crazy pull. Product-market fit. PMF. When you don’t even have the luxury of time to worry if you have PMF ’cause your customer success inbox/sales inbox is filled to the brim. Or you’re getting so many new users that you’re figuring out how to upgrade your servers before your servers go blank. For more on PMF, I highly recommend checking out Lenny Rachitsky‘s recent post surveying 25 of the most successful companies on when they realized they had PMF.

In closing

Tools and platforms that make it easier for an individual to go the distance, to be more efficient, carry 2 traits: accessibility and ease. With each stroke, with each action one takes, they can go further. They can do more. With less. Technology, in the incoming years, will further do so.

And as a VC scout, I look for, what I call – distance per action. Or DPA, for short. So, if you’re working on something that will enable people to have higher and greater DPAs, I wanna talk.

Photo by David Bartus on Pexels.com

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A Startup Hiring Philosophy

There’s a saying in venture that: “A-players hire A-players; B-players hire C-players.” Your ability to grow a business is often closely correlated with your ability to attract and acquire talent. But what does it mean to attract and hire world-class talent? Especially for functions you, as a founder, yourself may not be an expert in.

“A-players hire A-players;
B-players hire C-players.”

How does a first-time founder how to vet a seasoned sales executive? Or on the flip side, how does a non-technical founder learn to differentiate a good AI engineer from a great AI engineer?

While even the best founders, leaders, and managers make hiring mistakes, hopefully this post can act as a reference point as to what to look for. And while I have yet to master the craft, I’ll borrow 5 lessons from some of the best that has served as a guiding principle for me and for some of the founders I’ve worked with.

5 Lessons from 4 of the Greatest

  1. Hire passion; train skill.
  2. Desire/obsession > passion.
    • And, the ephemeral nature of passion.
  3. Hire VPs who can hire.
  4. Attract and hire intentionally.
    • On building trust.
    • On scaling yourself.
  5. To hire your best complements, ask people in your network 2 questions.
    • Who to ask? And what’s next?
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#unfiltered #27 The Impetus of My Social Experiments – Higher Research and the Application to Startups

bunny, egg, curiosity, curious, social experiments

People seem to love origin stories – both in theatre and in life.

“How did it all start?”

“How did you get into this career?”

Or…

“How did you meet your wife/husband?”

And well, I can’t say I’m one to push back on that.

There’s something truly magical about “Once upon a time…”. And I’m no stranger to fairy tales. Growing up, I was largely influenced by older female cousins and family friends. As soon as our parents left to their wine-sipping adult gossip around a table of blackjack, my cousins and older female friends would drag us to watch their favorite Disney movies on the VCR, namely princess movies. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve seen Beauty and the Beast more than 100 times or Cinderella more than 50 times. In fact, my friends in elementary school would talk about their favorite movies – Transformers, LEGO Bionicles, Peter Pan, and Tarzan. Yet, mine was Disney’s 1998 Mulan.

And they all started with “Once upon a time…”

So, it was no surprise when friends, colleagues, and then strangers started asking me:

“How/when/why did you start hosting social experiments?”

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#unfiltered #25 Meeting the Curiously Passionate and the Passionately Curious – The Why and The Where

travel, meeting people, rabbi sacks

“It’s the people not like us who make us grow.”

– Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on The Tim Ferriss Show Ep. #455

I recently tuned into, at the time of writing this post, Tim Ferriss’ third most recent podcast episode, interviewing Rabbi Sacks. Although I’m a regular listener to the show, I wasn’t expecting much. I neither have a history of being religious nor spiritual – merely peripheral curiosity. Yet, I don’t hesitate for one second to say: It is, by far, one of the most insightful and enlightening podcast episodes I’ve heard in 2020. So, if you have a spare 1.5 hours, I highly recommend it, especially if you’re looking for a perspective shift on:

  • Leadership,
  • Seeking peer approval,
  • What a single cold “call”/visit could get you,
  • And the need for “cultural climate change” in the understanding between the balance of “I” and “we”.

And Rabbi Sacks masterfully weaves these concepts together. While my reaction will never do his insights justice, two other thoughts, each paired with their own story, I had to double click on:

“Good leaders create followers, great leaders create leaders.”

“What happens when you’re in a situation in which you have done something that has generated widespread disapproval? How do you deal with that?

“Win the respect of the people you respect.”

And I digress.

The Bubble

I’ve lived my entire life so far in the Bay Area, barring a few vacations and excursions here and there. I was born here. I went through 12 years of grade school here. 13 if you count kindergarten. And though I had the option of leaving the Bay for college, I ended up choosing a school here as well. Truth be told, I might as well have “Made in the Bay” stamped on my forehead.

I live in a bubble. But I know I breathe in one. Not just geographically, but educationally, racially, sexually, socioeconomically, and so on.

Being a shy introvert pre-adulthood didn’t help with broadening my perspective on life either. I still remember the days in high school when I dreaded the teacher calling on me. Clammy palms, cold sweat, rigid spine. I would never vocally question disagreement. Equally, I would rather be a people pleaser than cause what I deemed to be unnecessary friction. I was a seafood hors d’ouevres of perturbation.

So, by inspiration from a mentor, I took actionable steps to conquer my own demons. Meet one new person you’re extremely excited to meet every single week for a year.

While I still carry the artifacts of myself yesterday, learning to balance myself between the person I thought and think I needed to become and the person I was, I began my journey 6 years ago.

The Pop in the Bubble

I’d be fronting if I said I wasn’t scared shitless when I began. Though I don’t think everyone in the world has this dilemma, I’m confident I am not alone. I had and have all these scenarios playing in my head. A bunch of ‘what-ifs’. What if they think I’m too nosy? What if they don’t have time to respond? Or what if they hate me for bothering them?

They say it gets better over time. And they’re not wrong. But I still have that lingering, gnawing feeling whenever I click send or put myself out there. While, over the years, the fears never fully dissipated, I’ve learned to tango with discomfort. In the words of my mentor who inspired my journey:

“You’re never as good as they say you are, but you’re also not as bad as they say you are. And hell, you can’t even be bad if they don’t even know who you are.”

… which I believe he drew inspiration from Lou Holtz. Shortly after, I clicked the “Send” button at the bottom of my first ‘curiosity’ email. After all, like he said, what’s the worst that can happen? Getting ignored. And as such, I would be no better nor worse off than I was and am in that cross section in time. With that assurance, it eventually led me to find my cold email “template” and hosting social experiments, like Brunches with Strangers.

The Where

Over the past few weeks, a few new people asked me: “Where do you find these people to reach out to?” Although it’s not the first and I assume certainly not the last, I thought I’d share in the form of this post as a possible inspiration for how we can grow, if I were to paraphrase Rabbi Sacks.

While I don’t characterize myself as a voracious reader, I allot time every day and have found many of my Senseis in the form of literature and discourse – online and offline, printed and taped, and in-person and remote. Including:

  • Books
  • Online articles/press releases
  • Newsletters
  • YouTube videos
  • Movies
  • Podcasts
  • Webinars/fireside chats
  • Textbooks
  • And, other people

One level deeper

To look beyond my own horizon, I tune into Pocket‘s Discover tab, or a platform I’ve recently fallen in love with, Readocracy. You can check out what online reading I’ve been up to lately on my Readocracy profile. And I can’t wait, when I can start tracking the books I read and the podcasts I listen to on there. I’m also fortunate enough to have friends who read, write, listen, and socialize with different social and professional circles than I do and am in. And as I meet more people, the spectrum of topics and interests snowball upon each other, as we help each other see new perspectives – some of which we never thought were possible.

Admittedly, where I find who to reach out to is, by no means, special or esoteric. In topics, I look into ones I’m genuinely interested in, in that moment and predictably beyond, even if it’s only a month or two, as promiscuous as I might be for many. In my short phases of promiscuity, I nevertheless take deep dives. Deep, yet often, not long. At the same time, I have a small handful of evergreen interests, like:

  • The art and science of building relationships,
  • The art of creating irreplaceable memories,
  • Psychology and mental models,
  • Swimming and intense athleticism,
  • Art as a multi-faceted definition,
  • Startups,
  • Technology and what lies at its frontier,
  • The final frontier – outer space and its cosmological inhabitants,
  • And the future.

In people, I look for two things:

  1. Inflection points in their life. Oxymorons/ironies. Overt and covert contradictions.
    • If I were to make assumptions given their initial attributes (i.e. education, age, gender, geography, career, life choices/circumstances, etc.), would I have been able to predict where they are now?
    • Of course, in making these assumptions, it is also my responsibility to be aware and to tread carefully where I should. Unfortunately, ignorance is not an excuse. If I’m unsure, I err on the side of caution.
  2. Deep intellectual curiosity and passion. Whom I call the passionately curious and the curiously passionate.

In closing

While I’m prone to talking too much at times, during these moments, it is my duty and the highest form of respect I can offer, to listen. If I were to take it from a selfish note, I learn so much more when I listen. And in actively listening, and actively checking my biases, to respond with thoughtful questions.

So, I’ll close on more thing Rabbi Sacks said in his recent interview with Tim Ferriss:

“Safe space means that courteous discipline of respectful listening.”

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

#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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On Scale – Lessons on Culture, Hiring, Operating, and Growth

flower, scale

One of my favorite thought exercises to do when I meet with founders who have reached the A- and B-stages (or beyond) is:

“What will his/her company look like if he/she is no longer there?”

The Preface

While the question looks like one that’s designed to replace the founder(s), my intention is everything but that. Rather, I ask myself that because I want to put perspective as to how the founder(s) have empowered their team to do more than they could independently. Where the collective whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Have the founders built something that is greater than themselves? And is each team member self-motivated to pursue the mission and vision?

It reminds me of the story of a NASA janitor’s reply when President Kennedy asked: “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?”

“Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

From the astronaut who was to go into space to the janitor cleaning the halls of NASAs space center, each and every one had the same fulfilling purpose that they were doing something greater than themselves.

And if the CEO is able to do that, their potential to inspire even more and build a greater company is in sight. Can he/she scale him/herself? And in doing so, scale the company past product-market fit (PMF)?

For the purpose of this post, I’ll take scale from a culture, hiring, operating, and product perspective, though there are much more than just the above when it comes to scale. Answering the questions, as a founder:

  • How do you expand your audience?
  • How do you build a team to do so?
  • And, how do you scale yourself?

And to do so, I’ll borrow the insights of 10 people who have more miles on their odometer than I do.

While many of these lessons are applicable even in the later stages of growth, I want to preface that these insights are largely for founders just starting to scale. When you’ve just gone from zero to one, and are now beginning to look towards infinity.

The TL;DR

  1. Build a (controversial) shocking culture.
  2. Hire intentionally.
  3. Retaining talent requires trust.
  4. Build and follow an operating philosophy.
    • Create, hold, and share excitement.
    • Align calendars.
  5. Upgrade adjacent users as your next beachhead.
  6. Capture adoption by changing only 1 variable per user segment.
Continue reading “On Scale – Lessons on Culture, Hiring, Operating, and Growth”
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#unfiltered #24 How long do you take to prepare for a talk? – A Study about Time Allocation

notes, prepare for a talk, public speaking

Last week, my mentor/friend asked me if I knew anyone who’s stellar at storytelling and would be willing to hold a 1-hour workshop about it with his mentorship group. I connected with my buddy who earned his chops podcasting and being a brilliant customer-oriented founder, specifically on the user journey.

And it got me thinking. Hmmmm, I wonder how long people take to prep for a workshop or talk designed to inform and educate. Which eventually led me to the question… How much time allocation might many event hosts underestimate when asking a speaker to speak at their event?

Well, outside of travel, set up, rehearsal time, and of course, the length of the talk/workshop itself.

So, over the last few days, I reached out to 68 friends, mentors, and colleagues who have been on the stage before, including:

  • VCs – who invest out of vehicles that range from $5M to $1B (sample-specific)
  • Angels – investing individuals, who have over $1M in net worth
  • Founders – both venture-backed and bootstrapped
  • Executives – Fortune 500 and startup
  • Journalists
  • Influencers – YouTubers and podcasters
  • Consultants/Advisors
  • Professors
  • And, those who’ve been on public stages with 1000+ in live viewership.

… and asked them 2 questions:

  1. How long, in hours, do you take to prepare for a 1-hour talk?
    • For the purpose of slightly limiting the scope to this question, let’s say it’s on a topic you’re extremely passionate and well-versed in, and the audience is as, if not more, passionate than you are.
  2. And if I said this was for a high-stakes event, that may change your career trajectory, would your answer change? If so, how long would you spend prepping?

50 responded, with numerical answers, by the time I’m writing this post, with a few results I found to be quite surprising. *pushing my nerd glasses*

Continue reading “#unfiltered #24 How long do you take to prepare for a talk? – A Study about Time Allocation”
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#unfiltered #23 Twenty-Four Frames per Second – Jerry Colonna, The Illusion of Motion, Mental Health, and Radical Self-Inquiry

24 fps, film, questions about mental health

What appears fluid is twenty-four frames per second. Twenty-four precious moments per second, lived second after second after second. And each of those still moments is imbued with feelings and memories. The rapid fluidity of each of those moments defines the patterns and beliefs that, in turn, define our lives.

Our lives are twenty-four frames per second, with each frame a set piece of feeling, belief, obsession about the past, and anxiety about the future. Neither good nor bad, these frames form us. They become the stories we tell ourselves again and again to make sense of who we’re becoming, who we’ve been, and who we want to be.

Ghosts of our pasts – our grandparents and their grandparents as well as the ghosts of their lives – inhabit the frames. They and their beliefs, interpretations of scenes, words, and feelings haunt the frames of lives as surely as the roses, figs, and lemon drops of our present daily lives do.

Slowing down the movie of our lives, seeing the frames and how they are constructed, reveals a different way to live, a way to break old patterns, to see experiences anew through radical self-inquiry.

– Jerry Colonna in Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up Chapter 1: Passing GO

Who is Jerry Colonna?

I recently had the fortune of having an email exchange with one of the greatest household names in the space of startups and venture capital, especially known for his empathy and candor. A name synonymous with mental health, accelerators and being radically honesty about his journey – professional and personal. In our chat on mental health, he highly recommended Jerry Colonna‘s book, where the above passage comes from. So I just had to get it.

I first heard of Jerry on Harry Stebbing’s Twenty-Minute VC (his most recent episode with the CEO Whisperer) and The Tim Ferriss Show. And over the years, possibly as a result of confirmation bias, I’ve heard his name pop up over and over again from various founders and VCs. Over the decades, many people know Jerry as:

  • A venture capitalist,
  • An executive coach,
  • Co-founder of New York’s Flatiron Partners,
  • Partner at JP Morgan,
  • Founder of Reboot,
  • And, probably best known now for being the CEO whisperer.

So far, his book has reflected all the above and more.

A short trip down memory lane

Although we’re used to 60 frames per second (fps) for daily use or 120 fps for movies these days, the illusion of motion was first found at the optimal 16 fps. Early silent films, like Charlie Chaplin films, were then sped up to 24 fps, as far back as 1927. Admittedly, part of the reason as to why they seemed so comical. As technology caught up, still, the de facto frame rate was 24 fps.

In 2012, The Hobbit series was shot in 48 fps. In 2016, Bill Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was shot and projected in 120 fps. Gemini Man, which came to theaters 3 years later, followed suit. James Cameron also plans to shoot Avatar 2 at 60fps, with the goal of maximizing the feel of a 3D-world. But as both filmmakers and animators approach higher and higher frame rates, there have been and will continue to be the effect of the uncanny valley. Uncanny valley, or in other words, the more something artificial looks to be real, the more our minds try to reject its appearance. Subsequently, making certain objects, robots, or animations seem creepy and chilling. Part of the reason, it’s a ‘hell no’ to horror films for me.

After decades of 24 fps films, it’ll take a while before our minds catch up to what we see. But I digress.

Moving Forward

Just like how silent films shot at 12-16 fps were shown at 24 fps, giving its comical effect, many of us, myself included (until 3 years back), live by weaving narratives between cross sections of time – both in our personal lives and in our careers. And we script our biographies in a format where seemingly everything happened for a reason. Maybe some things did.

But on the other hand, maybe you’re like me. Where I don’t know what the hell is going to happen tomorrow. Yes, I tell myself I have these plans and goals in life I’m working on accomplishing. But if you ask me, what pitfalls are up ahead? I haven’t even thought about half of them. Another quarter, and I’m being generous to myself here, I think I have a good grasp on, but knowing myself, I’ve got about 20% of it down, 80% I’m missing some piece of the puzzle.

After all, as Warren Buffett once said,

“The rear view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”

The last quarter – I’m scared – really scared for. But, what’s life without a bit of risk and adventure?

Moving in the Present

While it’s easy to build that narrative for the trail behind us, it’s hard to forecast the narrative forward. So, I take life play by play – frame by frame. Slowing down to that 16 fps, examining, like Jerry suggests, my life in real time. Savoring and reflecting on every moment – the good and the bad. Reexamine my biases – the overt and the covert, in the words of a brilliant sociology professor I chatted with last week. ‘Cause they will make who I am tomorrow.

So, I’ll end on 2 big questions, inspired by that professor. 2 questions I plan to answer and reexamine every month:

  1. What do your social circles look like?
    • Professional? Personal?
    • How did you meet them? How often do you stay in touch with them?
    • What beliefs – overt and covert- are they reinforcing? Are these beliefs worth reinforcing?
  2. Now that you know, what are you willing to give up to make it happen?
    • Are you willing to take radical measures to do so?
    • What do you say that you don’t mean? Or find it hard to follow through on?

Photo by Kushagra Kevat on Unsplash

#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, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!

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