An ode to Good Investors
There are different types of investors out there. To overgeneralize a bit, I’ve encountered 6 types of investors:
Active and helpful
Active and not helpful
Active and destructive
Passive and helpful
Passive and not helpful
Passive and destructive
Not helpful doesn’t mean destructive, it’s just not additive. An example is the investor who always sends you links to check out on competitors. It’s not bad in any way, but you’ve likely already read the articles. On the off chance you haven’t caught one, it’s great that someone’s dropping them in your inbox. Not good, not bad. Just not all that helpful.
The difference between active and passive IMO is formal commitment to the company. Active investors take board seats or board observer seats, follow on in later rounds of funding, etc. Passive investors don’t. That doesn’t mean you don’t talk to passive investors, it just means they’re not the person who’s going to fund your next round or step in when it comes to strategic decisions.
Helpful is pretty self explanatory. These investors try to add value to the organization and do. Destructive is the opposite. These investors stand in the way of good decisions for the company, or worse, actively try to kill the company in some way shape or form (intentionally or otherwise).
This is an ode to the passive and helpful investors out there. Active and helpful always get the nod, but passive and helpful are important too. These are the investors who read all of your updates, keep up to date on the goings on of the company, care about your success, and every once in a while come in with the unexpected pinch hit.
I’ve had the absolute pleasure of working with some great passive and helpful investors. Huge shoutout to Ed Kim (RDC), Dan Pullman (Fresh Peaks), and Hemant Bhardwaj (Taurus Ventures) who have always had the company’s back. Shoutout to all the other passive and helpful investors out there!
Lots of people have been talking about how flush the private markets are right now and how there’s never been a better time for raising tons of capital at high valuations. SPACs, IPOs, NFTs, Tiger, etc.
Friendly reminder that this isn’t everyone’s experience. Women raised only 2.2% of all venture capital in 2020, down from 2019. In 2019, WeWork raised more than all women. And that’s only one lens. Diverse founders, for the most part, aren’t seeing that same opportunity right now.
So before you go off on twitter talking about how easy it is to raise, remember there’s probably a founder reading your tweets having a tough time. If you are lucky enough to be connected to these big pools of money, reach out to founders who don’t look like you and offer to make just one investor connection. You never know how that might change a founder’s path. I will always be forever grateful for all of the intros made for me and I hope to give back tenfold to other founders.
Tool Recommendation
OK. I have to gush on a product for a little. Everyone who’s ever had to make presentations before, this one’s for you.
Go to beautiful.ai right now. Go ahead, this newsletter can wait.
As a founder, I have to make decks all of the time. Really, all of the time. For customer presentations, for investor pitches, for board meetings, for keynote talks, all of the time. And making a good presentation takes time and so much brain energy.
Then I found beautiful.ai. It has shaved so many hours off my calendar. It’s essentially a series of nice looking templates for slides (the ones we use all the time) but it’s got some pretty cool functionality, like logo and icon libraries where you can search for any logo and it will pull up the best formatted versions from the web. Creating a partner slide used to take a gazillion hours. You had to find logos, format them, make them all the same size, etc. With beautiful.ai you don’t have to do any of that.
This isn’t a sponsored post. I just really love it. And it’s got a free version, so I highly recommend checking it out.
Why I’ve been MIA for the last few weeks
We’re fostering a dog! For two months, we are watching a 6 year-old terrier who has been a really fun addition to our house. He’s very cute. I’ve spent all my newsletter writing time hanging out with him instead.
As an apology, please accept this cute picture of Nubie (short for Anubis).
Artemis Live Talks
We’ve had some really amazing sessions on my LinkedIn Live series lately. Posting below in case you’re interested in some of the cool things happening in the indoor ag space.
Episode 6: Wanda James, Simply Pure - we chat about social justice and cannabis.
Episode 7: Micki Seibel, Unfold - we chat about seed breeding for the vertical farming industry.
We host these conversations every Thursday at 4p ET on our LinkedIn page.