@MollySOShea@137ventures Love this - the world makes sense when awesome people operate in their genius and are successful at it! Congrats @137ventures! 🫶👏👏
Time theft
"Time is the scarcest resource. Unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed." - Peter Drucker
Protecting your time is one of the most important things you can do in business and making sure your meetings have purpose and intent is the best way to get ROI on your time
- if you are meeting with VCs, is it about upstream, downstream or co-investing relationships?
- if its with a founder / operator, is there are a near-term or long-term opportunity to fund or hire them (would you want to fund/hire them and does the time spent on longer relationship development processes justify it)?
- BD partners, do you see opportunities for insight or influence that would be accretive to each other and does the value of that justify the time invested?
Yes, this is a social job, but it's still a job.
If you are spending your time taking endless catch-up meetings without tying them to some type of potential short-term and long-term business outcome, then you're wasting valuable time and resources.
Most of the time when folks reach out to me for meetings without purpose (especially if I don't know them well), it tells me that they either don't value their time or they don't value mine (neither are good). In most of these cases, it's someone asking me for a favor (ex. emerging manager that I don't know asking me for LP intros or an invite to EMC) and wanting to meet with me before making the ask. This is not only horribly transactional, but I'd rather just do the favor than take an hour long meeting to arrive at this outcome. That hour is time taken away from my family, our firm and our founders and that's time that is deeply valuable to me.
This is NOT the way that the most successful people I know "network".
When those folks reach out to me, they make it clear why they want to spend time together and what they are trying to achieve. It is implicit that to achieve that objective, it will require more trust, but we mutually are opting into that process of getting to know each other to unlock that objective. They don't focus on boiling the ocean on countless relationships, but are surgical in how they think about long-term relationship development and the doors it can unlock.
Networking can be incredibly valuable time spent, but it needs to be done with intention. I think of the most impactful business relationships I have.
- a LP that I got to know for over a decade before they anchored our fund
- a friendship with co-investor from a top valley firm that has led to us doing multiple successful deals together
- multiple founder relationships that I pursued for years to win the right to be their first investor in their new company
- an authoritative expert on a topic that helps deliver insights and connections others don't have
- a young talent that you see with high slope, knowing some day they will become a titan in this field
These are relationships with intention and duration. These are the relationships that matter. Yes, the 30 minute coffee chat may be the first interaction for all these. But with only so much time in the day, figuring out who to spend it with and how to maximize the benefit to each other becomes paramount.
TLDR - Don't send messages to folks that you haven't seen in 5 years saying "Hey, would be great to catch up, have an hour later this week?"
Adult friendships require grace. People are busy. People are working. People are parenting. People are burnt out. People are healing. People are fighting health battles. People are prioritizing their true responsibilities. Don’t mistake minimal communication for a lack of care or love. Some of us are just getting by and giving everything we have to our families. Check in before you check out.
@KyleSamani@multicoin Super congrats on your epic run!
Even bigger congrats to the courage and conviction it takes to shift your identity and purpose in this next chapter!!
When contacting a very busy person, think of their calendar as a very very full glass of water.
Can you add a drop or two? Yes, most people can handle that. But any more and it is gonna spill.
Think time and cognitive load: Concise and low lift, high impact is best.
If you are pinging someone who’s busier than you, you should have a single well-thought-out specific ask. Only ask for something you truly cannot do on your own, and where you have done everything you possibly can by yourself.
For example, if you’re asking someone to send an email on your behalf, you should have a draft message ready. If you’re asking them to sign something, you should prepare a docusign beforehand with the signature blocks indicated. Or if you’re asking for an appointment, you should do it at their convenience.
Asking for time is like asking for capital, so be efficient with your asks.
Every busy person especially ones with kids is struggling with their time working on their mission vs being present as a parent and spouse
Believe it or not that is generally what the undirected “grab coffee” email is competing with and guess what: they should choose their kids
When contacting a very busy person, think of their calendar as a very very full glass of water.
Can you add a drop or two? Yes, most people can handle that. But any more and it is gonna spill.
Think time and cognitive load: Concise and low lift, high impact is best.
Every busy person especially ones with kids is struggling with their time working on their mission vs being present as a parent and spouse
Believe it or not that is generally what the undirected “grab coffee” email is competing with and guess what: they should choose their kids
If you are pinging someone who’s busier than you, you should have a single well-thought-out specific ask. Only ask for something you truly cannot do on your own, and where you have done everything you possibly can by yourself.
For example, if you’re asking someone to send an email on your behalf, you should have a draft message ready. If you’re asking them to sign something, you should prepare a docusign beforehand with the signature blocks indicated. Or if you’re asking for an appointment, you should do it at their convenience.
Asking for time is like asking for capital, so be efficient with your asks.
🚀Below is my conversation with @tracyfong of Albourne Partners who has over $700B Assets Under Advisement. We discuss the role LP consultants play in the ecosystem, and how endowments access emerging managers.
Full episode links below👇.
“It is purported in the press that Yahoo offered a billion dollars to acquire Facebook. It's purported at the time that I worked at Yahoo. In that context, it was a really interesting set of competitors that we still considered competitively, not necessarily in the context of M& A because this is all purported, of course.
Competitively, there was increasingly more social media advertising, inventory in the market. And it was an area that we felt we needed to pursue over time. Just as you said, market dynamics and how innovative market innovations need to be pursued by these underlying companies. So as Yahoo observed some of this opportunity set to continue to expand into this area, perhaps if a billion dollar worth of price tag, it was underpriced relative to the total addressable market over time.”
(00:00) Episode Preview
(01:06) What is Albourne and How do LP consultants work?
(01:41) What Tracy has learned since joining the industry in 1999
(02:41) Learnings from the dot com bubble
(05:45) Are companies now making the same mistakes present in the early 2000s?
(07:03) Tracy’s tensure on the M&A team at Yahoo
(10:28) Episode Sponsor: Tactyc
(12:04) Yahoo’s rumored Facebook acquisition offer
(14:46) How the market adjusted with YouTube and WhatsApp
(17:31) How top endowments are investing
(19:01) Do access constrained funds still exist?
(22:22) Why being a hybrid manager is unique
(23:13) Finding greenshoots in bear markets
(24:38) Main investing mistakes family offices make
(26:45) How to understand the market before making a venture investment
(29:57) Albourne’s mission and reach
(32:35) Why it’s critical to always be in the market
(33:19) Why Albourne is differentiated
(33:56) How to engage an LP consultant
(37:48) Why fund of funds have grown in number and popularity
(40:27) How to reach Tracy
#OpenLP
@TurpentineMedia@eriktorenberg Torenberg
Thank you to our sponsor @tactycHQ.