I am a Venture Capitalist. And so are you.

Ha. It just hit me. We’re all Venture Capitalists!

Just think about all the business I/we/you fund/have funded . . .

Personally, I have been investing a ton of various capital (money, time, attention) in a bunch of companies: Patagonia, Facebook, New York Times, Altoids, Uber, Apple, Lemon Pledge, BMW, Northwestern, Dollar Shave Club, Starbucks, Clabber Girl, Waze, Nest, Count Chocula. I could go on.

Three companies I was an early investor in.

But let me use the above pictured companies to illustrate specifically what I mean.

Like an ahead of its time Kickstarter, I am so proud of my prescient ability to pick a winner. Well, I was 6 so I have to give some credit to my Mom since she was the one who went to the PigglyWiggly and actually picked up the MVP (Minimal Viable Product) for me to experiment with. And supported me with my childhood seed capital.

PigglyWiggly in Belleville, IL where I discovered many of the early-stage companies I invested in.

I remember Mom bringing home a beta version of Count Chocula in 1971. I had researched the nascent brand in cutting-edge publications like Mad Magazine and thought it would be worth checking out.

Cutting-edge branded content introducing start ups Count Chocula, BooBerry and FrakenBerry. Appeared as Native Advertising in Mad Magazine.

So I got out my favorite cereal bowl, pictured below, and began a series of A-B testing on the product. Man, it was excellent. Some magical combination of varying forms of chemical chocolate — textures, tastes, mouth feel, umami, and the crisp crunch before it absorbed too much milk. This was a winner and I knew it immediately!

The original Pyrex Cinderella Mixing bowl I would use to test start-up cereals like Count Chocula, Quisp, et al.

That’s not to say all my picks were sure-fire winners. I went through a mis-guided, Greenspian irrational exuberant phase and over-invested in mis-fires like Chocodiles.

We all miss sometimes.

I was out of my mind for this innovative product. I thought for sure this was going to be a Hostess break through. There was no direct competitor in the category, so the “first in” principal applied. Also, the brand “content” was out of site. Chauncey Chocodile was brilliant. Just weird enough to be a meme (though there were no memes yet), I knew it had pop-culture stickiness.

Alas, I was wrong about its mass appeal. Chocodiles were limited to West Coast distribution by 1990 and Hostess filed for bankruptcy. But hey, valuable lesson learned — just because I’m passionate about something doesn’t always mean it’s going to hit big. See Husker Du.

I was an early-stage investor in the Du. Though they didn’t hit broad sales, Mould would go on to mass market success with his third venture, Sugar.

Putting early seed capital in Husker Du taught me another invaluable investment lesson. Just because the first manifestation of a visionary doesn’t hit big, doesn’t mean you should give up on the visionary. Feeling burned by the tepid sales of HD, I was reluctant to bet big on both the Bob Mould band and his third iteration, Sugar. I also picked the wrong founder to back since I was a bigger believer in Grant Hart. I made the same mistake when I went all in on Jay Farrar instead of Jeff Tweedy when Uncle Tupelo morphed separately into the Son Volt and Wilco enterprises, respectfully.

I invested big in Farrar instead of Tweedy. My bad.

Lesson definitely learned!

So I’m sure, as a fellow VC, you are probably wondering “Hmm, where is Dan going to make big bets in 2016?”.

Well, for that I will have to charge you a fee. Just sign up for my investment strategy email at www.thefietsamgroup.com and we can talk all things VC there.

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