Every Thanksgiving, I send thank you emails and letters to the people who’ve changed my life to date – from elementary school teachers to career mentors, from friends to family – each one unique to the person who has changed my life. I don’t really have a template for any of these emails or letters. And yes, as the years go on, I will only have more and more people to send these thank you notes to. The time I spend writing each one of these is worth the lifetime each of them gave me. Whether it was just one exchange that opened doors for me or years of guidance, each one of them have my utmost respect and gratitude. In this post, I will share ten letters to the ten people (and their respective lessons and quote) who have changed and continue to change my life, shaping me into the person I am today. To respect their privacy, I’ve abstracted everyone’s names, but that doesn’t change the gravity of my thanks or their lessons.
A little of what to expect:
- The One who Taught Me Creativity
- The One who Taught Me Curiosity
- The One who Taught Me Self-Worth
- The One who Taught Me Open-mindedness
- The One who Taught Me Empathy
- The One who Taught Me Hope
- The One who Taught Me Integrity
- The One who Taught Me Perspective
- The One who Taught Me How to Fail
- The Two who Taught Me Education
The One who Taught Me Creativity
“A good student can solve five different problems one way. A great student can solve one problem five different ways.”
Dear Voyager,
I still remember the day, more than a decade ago, when you assigned the class homework over Christmas break. Although I chimed in with the class, complaining before I even saw the assignment, I remember grabbing a bag of Doritos and sitting down to read the assignment as soon as I got home that Friday ’cause, hell, I wasn’t planning to spend the whole break dreading doing the homework on the last day before school started. To my surprise, there was only one problem – a simple one – in the entire assignment, with the footnote: “A good student can solve five different problems one way. A great student can solve one problem five different ways.”
I didn’t realize it that sunny, but cold afternoon, but it was my first exposure to the contrarian view, where breadth was more important than depth. But that enlightenment, admittedly, lay dormant for another decade. It seems most of the people around me readily offered up the statement “depth over breadth”, which I took for granted. I was told it’s much better to be amazing at one thing than really good at many things – to not be a “jack of all trades, but master of none.” And it makes sense. In fact, it’s quite applicable in many careers, where the sole purpose is to dig really deep into one subject.
The day I realized it was three months into my venture capital career, when quite literally, hell broke loose. Five days before the day all of our portfolio startups had to present to an audience of investors, the power in our building went out. Many of the software startups only had to restart their servers, but some others didn’t have luck on their side, namely a hydroponics venture. With the power outage, their water system stopped running, and their plants had wilted over the weekend. Unlike some of the other startups who didn’t need cash as urgently, this one had to raise funds on Demo Day. We tried many different ideas – from placing them under direct sunlight to fertilizing. In the chaos, we were just throwing around ideas, and I remembered what one flower shop owner told me three days before Valentine’s Day. Although I was in a dedicated relationship at the time, I just didn’t have time to buy flowers right before our date, so I asked him, “How can I keep these roses looking just like they do now, but in three days?”
He winked at me, “Cut these stems diagonally, put it in a vase of water. Then add in two bags of sugar from that coffee shop over there and a teaspoon of white vinegar. I promise they’ll look better than they do today.” And that was the same advice I offered that startup. In two days, the herbs came back to life. And on Demo Day, I think they tasted a little sweeter than when I tried them last, but maybe it was just placebo.
Thank you, Mr. V, for your lessons challenging convention, to always question the world around us, and to “unbias” our own perspectives. I wish you and your family the best over this holiday season!
With deep gratitude,
David
The One who Taught Me Curiosity
“Be interested and interesting!”
Hi Opportunity,
You probably don’t remember me in our short email interaction over two years ago in September of 2016. I understand you get hundreds of emails a day, so don’t feel pressured to respond, I just want to thank you.
That said, you said something that has impacted my life in the two years that ensued: Be interested and interesting!
When I was still a student at Berkeley, admittedly, I didn’t really get it. What did you mean: be interested? Was I not interested enough when I was was reaching out to people already?
But now I get it. Quite embarrassing, I used to see networking as a means to an ends – a job, a referral, a means to elevate myself; but over the years I realized that each person are ends in and of themselves. I was interested to be interesting, and it was all wrong! It clicked one day when I was on BART when I saw a middle school friend I hadn’t connected with in a long time. He had fallen, by his words, from grace. He had been kicked out from college, was diagnosed with a medical condition he never thought he had, and at a point in time, when all his friends shunned him for his past mistakes he made in high school. It was a 30 minute BART ride, but I couldn’t help but want to help him no matter what. I couldn’t bear to see him like that. And for the first time, consciously, I cared for someone else outside of family and super close friends without a hope of reaping a benefit. And in the months that followed, they were some of the most fulfilling months that I’ve ever had.
And what you said, clicked. Thank you.
Happy Holidays! I wish you and your family the best of holidays! Stay frosty and stay awesome!
Holiday Cheerios,
David
Personal Note: Funny how I end up taking things to the extremes. I sent this thank you email last year, and I ended up fascinated by various facets of people’s lives, past, and ambitions, but I forgot the the second part of the fundamental equation for developing relationships – be interesting. Over the past year, of the “No’s” I’ve gotten, I’m grateful to the people who tell me I’m just not interesting enough or that I don’t have anything they’re interested in. In the past year, that’s exactly what I’ve been working on (Stay tuned for posts about them.). Relationships exist as a two-way street; you need to be as curious in them as they are in you. From personal experience, most people are fascinating enough, fascinated in ideas, projects, and topics, but not always in people.
The One who Taught Me Self-Worth
“Be proud someone is copying you; that means you have something worth copying.”
Dear InSight,
I hated being copied. I thought my ideas were proprietary to myself. They were mine, mine, and mine. I spent good time on those ideas, trying to come up with the most creative and unprecedented idea for each homework and project you assigned us. Yet, I remember being shamed by people who could make my school life a living hell for not letting them copy off my homework. I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to them. And I kept it all bottled up. Then one day I let it loose when you brought a classmate and me to the side of the class. I didn’t care who was looking or who heard; I just cared about justice. I don’t remember if I held back my sobs or let the tears flow, but I do remember what you said as clear as day. Your next words changed me ever since then. Calmly and surely, you said, “Be proud someone is copying you; that means you have something worth copying.“
I’ve graduated from multiple schools since then. I made many new friends. I’ve tackled a few careers, which you’ve had the play by play every year. And, haha, you’re always more excited about my developments than I am myself. I’ve come to realize that it’s the same in the land of business and startups. If it’s a good idea, the market will crowd around, replicate, and iterate it in the blink of an eye. We saw it with real estate. We saw it with subscription-based models. We saw it with cryptocurrency. It’s social proof that an idea works. As Marc Andreessen, a juggernaut in my industry, once said, “The difference between a vision and a hallucination is that other people can see the vision.”
I started a blog this year with your words in mind. None of my ideas are proprietary. They’ve all been inspired, directly or indirectly, by the people around me. I hope, one day, people will be able take my ideas and make it their own.
Thank you for always being there, especially when I needed it most. Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you and your family nothing short of the best!
Gratitude with gratuity,
David
The One who Taught Me Open-mindedness
“Some of the best ideas seem crazy at first.”
Hi Curiosity,
No idea is ever bad. Only in execution, can we tell the truly crazy from the crazy good. You taught me not to be so dismissive of people and ideas I find to be bizarre, weird, or crazy, but to turn my aversion into intrigue. You taught me to be an optimist when there are so few in the world we live in now, but also that I needed to be one if I wanted to tackle the VC industry. You taught me to stand in their shoes and think, what if this were true? What could happen if the stars aligned?
By giving founders, as well as the people around us, the benefit of doubt, I’ve realized there are a lot more possibilities and opportunities that I once would have never seen behind a closed door. Though it is easier to be a naysayer than a promoter, thank you for teaching me to stay open-minded.
Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you and your family nothing short of the best!
Warmth in thanks,
David
The One who Taught Me Empathy
“The value of [communication] is measured by how much reaches the other person’s ear, not by how much leaves your mouth.”
Hi Maven,
I remember the first time we were finally able to schedule a call between us. You were sick and were flying below the weather. Even though I kept saying that we should reschedule, you insisted that you wanted to help now and keep your word on a commitment that we both agreed on before. That night, your words and actions deeply moved me and within the first ten seconds, you had my unconditional respect for you, your character, and your values. For a complete stranger, you were willing to sacrifice your time and your health.
Over the years, wanting to climb out of the shell of my former shy self, I thought I had to speak more to be heard. And I did, but dialogues became more and more like monologues. You taught me to not be obsessed with what I have to say, but rather be obsessed with what others have to say. And to embrace the silence. You were right. Sometimes, I come out of a conversation more excited and more educated than I went into it. Thank you.
Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you and your family nothing short of the best!
Listening to silence,
David
The One who Taught Me Hope
“Not there quite yet… but maybe one day.”
Hey Orion,
“Not there quite yet… but maybe one day.“
Although you never explicitly said that to me, it was the subject line of our first email exchange, the theme of most of our email conversations, and the emotional backbone for my endeavors. I’ve relied on it since the summer we met. You were there when I asked for best practices for reaching out to when I had to learn how to deal with rejection after rejection.
You taught me how to get back up and how to best set myself up to bounce back after failures. My favorite, which I’ve since shared with many of the founders I work with, is, outside of the corporate board of advisors, to always have a personal board of advisors – a group of individuals I trust to always have my back and whom I can always be honest with. That group is where I can regress to my lowest denominator and be unforgivingly vulnerable, and they’d still be there with my best interests in mind.
Thank you for being one of my personal board members and for your patience as I made mistakes after mistakes. Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you and your family nothing short of the best!
Thankful and Hopeful,
David
The One who Taught Me Integrity
“Pay it forward.”
Dear Spirit,
When we first met as you wrapped up your workshop on how to find the best talent from our own networks, I remember being the last person in line to try to speak to you. Everyone before me asked questions for you to elaborate on what you shared in the workshop, but I kept thinking of all the questions I wanted to ask you. And I knew you didn’t have time to answer all of them. As I unfurled the scrap of notebook paper with all my questions on there, yet nervous, that I would forget how to word each question, you saw it, smiled, and said something along the lines of, “I don’t think I’ll be able to answer all of that. Here’s my email. Let’s set up a time to chat.”
To be honest, I thought you wouldn’t have time to respond if I did email you. But you did reply. And, we scheduled a lunch six months in advance – at that point, the longest I ever had time to be anxious for. Six months later, after lessons on strategies ranging from go-to-market to ideation to mentorship, I asked you how I could repay you for the time, the advice, and the meal. You looked at me with the same smile and said, “Pay it forward.“
I realized that sometimes, the greatest form of enrichment is to know someone you helped is out there helping someone else who really needs it. It is knowing that as a mentor, you’ve catalyzed a chain reaction of virtue and giving. Thank you for that lesson and the many that followed. I promise that I will continue the cycle which your mentors and their mentors started.
Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you and your family nothing short of the best!
With the utmost gratitude,
David
The One who Taught Me Perspective
“There are always at least two ways to look at any picture.”
Dear Magellan,
Every time we started a drawing or painting lesson, you’d always start pointing out these gems hidden from my sight. “Here’s a monkey. There’s that yellow cartoon game character who eats everything. There’s a man’s face. Here’s the number 3.” My reaction always began with “How… Wha- … Ahhhhh”, as I eventually dawn in realization. I swear you’d be the champion of a cloud-spotting competition if there ever was one. You taught me to always look at a picture from multiple angles, drawing from analogies and parallels in the world that I knew to the world you were trying to open to me. Zooming in from big picture to the granular scale, from the dark spots to the light spots, from the angles to the boxes, any monumental project would seem much simpler when we broke it own to things I knew.
You also taught me that before I put my pen, pencil or brush on the canvas, I have to plan my entire journey before I begin, which seemed counter-intuitive to me, yet to be able to adapt to “happy accidents” on the fly if need be – switching seamlessly between organization and spontaneity.
You taught me art, in itself, is a science. It is purposeful. It is the culmination of all my previous experiences and scar tissue. It is a hypothesis of the mind put on paper. And the more I look into a piece, the more questions and the more complex it becomes. It is a canvas representative of the landscape, depicted by the bumps unique to each and the ephemeral edge or a pencil or brush. And it is the job of the artist to isolate variables to produce the best possible result.
At the same time, what you taught me is also true in life. Life is as much an art as it is a science. Life requires us to use organization and spontaneity interchangeably to capture the best opportunities. But your most important lesson, in art and in life, is the ability to observe, understand and empathize from multiple perspectives, so that we can be more self- and situationally-aware ourselves, as well as make better decisions.
Thank you for your lessons that have persisted across time. Thank you for teaching me to be open to new possibilities, resourceful, focused, and resolved. Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you and your family nothing short of the best!
Still painting my life’s canvas,
David
The One who Taught Me How to Fail
“Don’t fail slowly; fail fast.”
Hi Endeavor,
You taught to put the face of failure in the form of the macro, to help me conceptualize how inconsequential failure is. Twenty years from now, will I still remember? Or will I really care? If so, will I really want to shackle the rest of my life? In the grander scheme, can I afford the downtime between testing hypotheses? 30,000 days to live, not a single one to lose.
Thank you always for cutting the bullshit and for your radical honesty – the wake-up call when delude myself with dreams of grandeur, but sometimes, unwilling to accept the reality.
To the person who always took the shortcut to tell me of my folly, I hope you didn’t take shortcuts on the 24-hour marinade on that turkey. Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you and your family nothing short of the best!
Learning from failure,
David
The Two who Taught Me Education
“A smart person learns from his or her own mistakes. A genius learns from the mistakes of others.”
Hey Discovery and Dawn,
Words cannot describe the fortune I have to have been with you from day one. There are many things I’ve learned from both of you. There are even more things I am thankful for that I’ve been given, directly and indirectly, explicitly and implicitly, from both of you, but the greatest is definitely the ability to learn – to be able to weigh, rationalize, and grow by being a sponge. You always said, “Nothing you learn is ever wasted.“
Knowing how to learn, not just the action of learning itself, has me always hungry for knowledge – in books, projects, podcasts, and people – to live vicariously through mediums that are not native to me. I can only say I am still working on it and that I will continue to figure out not only new depths in knowledge, but also the processes to enhance knowledge acquisition.
This year, I’ve realized that writing has helped my knowledge retention – both in my idea journals every day, as well as through weekly blog posts. And only more to come!
Having both of you is my greatest fortune and my greatest asset.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I love you,
David
Final Thanks
As I mentioned before, these are only some of the many people I’m thankful for – people that I’ve known for years, people who offered me 20 minutes of their time, people who live across the globe, people who are no longer with us, and people who never asked for anything in return. I would love to include them all here, but unfortunately, I don’t have the real estate or time to put them all here. The above are all lessons I learned, sometimes a little later than I would have liked, but I hope my pitfalls won’t be yours and my learnings will. After all, one of my mentors did say, “A smart person learns from his or her own mistakes. A genius learns from the mistakes of others.” And, finally, you, my readers, have my eternal gratitude in reading what I have to say, as I learn to get step by step closer to escape velocity, by learning from those who have a few more miles on the odometer.
