snippets - #2 7.28
On investing, presenting, and some podcasts
What I look for in an investment
I was catching up with a friend who asked me how I decide to invest in a company. While later stage investors have rigorous criteria, I invest in very early stage companies. Eighty percent of the companies I’ve invested in so far were pre-launch. At this stage, there aren’t many metrics to assess. I’m primarily looking at the founder and the market they’re working in.
Founder/Market Fit - I tend to look for founders who have worked on, or were impacted by, the problem they’re addressing and are experts in their fields. Carolyn Mooney, the co-founder of nextmv was leading the decision engineering team, along with her co-founder, at GrubHub before starting her company (the infrastructure layer for routing optimization). Jen Edmon was a wedding planner and started Event Hollow, a platform aggregating vendor contracts and offering couples financing options. If you have domain expertise in your industry, it’s a lot easier to navigate the challenges of getting started, and later scaling.
Market - The market has to be big…really, really big. This is something I didn’t quite understand when I started working in startups over a decade ago. We often talk about how important it is for the market to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity, but we don’t often talk about why. Venture investors are seeking big returns. Unless the market is big enough, you’re limiting your paths toward that big return. Things aren’t going to go according to plan 100% of the time. As founders, we need to have the space to navigate that change. You may change your customer segment, your pricing model, your product, and your sales process 100 times before you are even close to getting it right. Charlie O’Donnell has a great example of how big a market needs to be for venture dollars to work.
Wheelhouse - This is the most subjective of the three. If I’m still thinking about what you’re building 48 hours after the pitch, it means I’m pretty excited about it. If after that period, I can come up with a list of things I could help you with immediately, I’ll likely write a check. Why? It’s in my wheelhouse. It means I think I can be helpful to you for the long haul and that’s really what you should be looking for in an investor.
There are a million reasons why investors say no to things. It’s not a guarantee that if a company does the three things above, I’ll invest. But it’s certainly a path toward a yes. Also, I’m new at this. I’m used to being on the other side of the table as a founder, so I tend to default to how I would want the process to go if I were in the founder’s shoes.
Things I’m looking at right now.
That same friend asked me to share some of the things I’m looking at investing in right now. I’ll try to include some companies I find interesting in each of the newsletters. I won’t include the names of the companies, but if anything seems interesting to you and you want an intro, let me know. Often these companies are seeking funding, mentors/advisors, customers, and employees. (I might not be investing in the companies described below. They’re simply interesting to me, they might be companies I help advise, and I may invest in directly.)
Synthetic CBD - this one’s super interesting to me, though very early. With the rise of CBD products, it has become challenging to create a safe, stable, consistent supply chain. Synthetic CBD could solve this problem. This company in particular is also working on a pharma approach to try offering a solution to the opioid crisis, which I find fascinating.
Hormone-safe products - I’m looking at a few companies in the beauty space that are developing clean, hormone-safe products free of endocrine-disrupting chemicals. I’m investing in two different approaches to this if anyone’s interested.
How I prepare a keynote presentation
Someone once told me that to give a successful talk you should spend one hour per minute of the talk preparing (something Russell Davies also talks about). If you’re giving a 10 minute talk, you should spend 10 hours preparing. For the most part, I follow this formula, however, I’ve also adapted it for content. If I’ve given a similar talk before, the prep time is reduced by 75%. So, if I’m giving a 45 minute keynote on Artemis, which is something I’ve done a lot, I’ll spend about 12 hours prepping. For a 10 minute talk I’ve never given before, I’ll still spend the 10 hours prepping.
If you’re thinking “wow, that’s a lot of time,” you’re right. Giving formal talks is a lot of work and is both costly and distracting. Because of this, I have a formula for how I evaluate speaking opportunities. If it’s a panel where I’m an expert on the topic and it is in front of a relevant audience (customers, partners, or media), I’ll agree right away (panels require less prep time than keynotes). If it’s a keynote talk (sole presenter) in front of a relevant audience, I’ll likely agree. If it’s a keynote in front of a non-relevant audience, I’ll pass right away. Anything else falls into a maybe bucket.
It’s also important to mention I don’t do speaking opportunities for free anymore. I don’t think we talk about this enough. If it’s going to take me 10 hours to prepare, time to travel to the event, and time spent at the event, it’s expensive. For me, speaking opportunities have to be a way to get in front of customers or partners and they have to compensate for my time. This is non-negotiable. This does mean I have to turn down some events, but that’s OK. I’ve learned over the years that the best opportunities are the ones that feel right and value your contribution. If you’re giving talks, you should be charging an honorarium.
Ok, so how do I write keynotes. Keynotes are longer, single-presenter, more formal talks. I typically follow this process:
Ask about the audience. Who will be listening? What do they do? Who do they work for? What are they hoping to get out of the event?
Write a testimonial. This is something I’ve been doing for a while. Based on the things you’ve learned about the audience, create a testimonial from an imaginary audience member. “I loved the talk on [topic]. I learned so much about [things] and can’t wait to do [something].”
Create talking points. Start thinking about what things might lead the audience to walk away with the testimonial you created.
Wireframe slides. Start putting placeholder slides together (if you’re using slides) that go along with the talking points.
Draft the full talk. Once you’ve got a first draft, spend time workshopping the full talk a number of times until it feels right.
Finalize slides.
Add in delivery notes. You want to connect emotionally to the audience. Delivery notes help identify when to breathe, pause, smile, laugh, accelerate, decelerate, etc. You can think of the words as the notes in a song and the delivery notes as the style, the dynamics, a crescendo or diminuendo, a piano or forte. The delivery notes are the heart of a talk. Below is an image from my TechCrunch Disrupt pitch in 2015 (note this was revision 14…I have no clue if this was the final version…I always iterate a lot during step 5).
Rehearse. I rehearse the talk from beginning to end, first without delivery and then with delivery. About a third of my prep time is spent on rehearsal. Because at the end of the day, practice makes perfect.
Some Podcasts
I was on a podcast recently with Eric Siu and we had lots of fun chatting about starting Artemis, COVID, Star Wars, and Zelda. You can check it out here.
Last week I recommended Arlan’s book It’s About Damn Time. I finished it the other day and I really can’t recommend it enough. Arlan has a knack for being unapologetically herself and telling stories about what it’s really like to build something amazing. She was also the focus of a few episodes on StartUp Podcast.
And she’s also got her own podcast (well more than one, but this one’s the one I’m listening to right now).