In the past month, I’ve doubted myself and my abilities more than I have in the past two years combined. Half from putting myself intentionally in tough conversations, half from pursuing new opportunities to see them turn belly up. The latter is merely a fact in life. But coupled with the former, I can’t say I was always the happiest camper. So, when in one of the former’s conversations, someone asked me: “Are you worth anything in the startup world?”… I hesitated for more than a day, before I had the courage to give myself an answer. While it was a rhetorical question then, it is a question I need a companion answer to now.
- Nothing. Without entrepreneurs, I am useless in this ecosystem. On the flip side, if there are entrepreneurs that I can help find product-market fit and grow, I’m a percentage-based function of their growth. Let’s say as an investor, I own 10% of a company. If the company’s worth $0, then I am too. If it’s not zero, then I’m worth whatever 10% of the whole is worth. Is that a representation of my true market value? No. It’s merely an assumption that for, say, $250K for 10%, I am worth, in the long run, at least 10x of $250K to help founders move faster on their journey.
- Something. How much? I don’t know. My job is to help pair founders with the knowledge, skills, and relationships that will transcend the outcome of the venture itself. They say entrepreneurship is never a zero sum game. Even if your idea doesn’t find its product-market fit, the time you spend hustling is cross-applicable to any other industry. Can founders find the knowledge, skills, and relationships without me? Most likely. There are so many resources online via YouTube, Medium, Substack, Quora, just to name a few, that it’d be silly of me to think I’m essential. What I can do is expedite the journey towards their goals. Hopefully even alleviate some stress. And even when I do so, I’m only truly useful in one chapter of their journey rather than the whole novel. But if my worth is just to reduce the friction it takes to get us one step closer to live in the world we want to live in tomorrow, then so be it.
I’m reminded of what Ashmeet Sidana of Engineering Capital said recently. “A company’s success makes a VC’s reputation; a VC’s success does not make a company’s reputation. In other words to take a concrete example, Google is a great company. Google is not a great company because Sequoia invested in them. Sequoia is a great venture firm because they invested in Google.”
Photo by Sunrise Photos on Unsplash
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