3 Lessons from Jonathan Hung, Managing Partner of Unicorn Venture Partners

Recently, Jonathan Hung of Unicorn Venture Partners came on our Demo Day podcast for CoEfficient Labs. In the episode, Jonathan shared numerous insights on navigating the rough waters of a startup.

Below I’ll share a few of my takeaways from our interview with Jonathan.

When Times Are Tough

As Jonathan mentioned in our interview, you can learn a lot about founders when times are tough.

Jonathan wants to know how founders will communicate and react in difficult situations — that’s when you really know what they’re made of and the ones who lose touch with their investors during these difficult times are really only hurting themselves. After all, a VC can’t help you if they don’t know there is a problem.

During times of crisis, Jonathan likes to make one thing clear for founders: Hope is not a strategy.

You have to do whatever is necessary to survive and this starts with being able to effectively communicate with others.

It Takes Time to Execute

The more time you spend building your company, the better you get at executing, but, as Jonathan points out, it takes time to execute. There needs to be some level of patience involved in the process.

For instance, one team might be able to get you from $0 to $100k in revenue while taking the business from $100k to $1m could require a different group of people. This takes time to figure out.

Furthermore, when executing, when building out your vision, Jonathan wants to know the answer to a simple question: Are you willing to give up everything for this idea?

As an investor, Jonathan isn’t willing to give 100% of his capital for the deal if the entrepreneur isn’t 100% in the business.

Always Be Closing

As Jonathan mentioned in our interview, success is 50% being knowledgeable and 50% luck and timing. Timing is critical.

Furthermore, if you show that you’re a good person to trust now, even if you fail, you still have the next startup. Plus, if you’ve failed trying to build a startup or two, you’ve probably learned something in the process — those learnings can be applied to your next venture.

My takeaway here? Always be closing. Show that you can make progress, pivot as needed, and learn from your mistakes.

Want to Learn More?

You can watch Jonathan’s full video interview on our Demo Day website, or listen to his full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Tune in next week as I share more learnings from Demo Day. Sending love from the entire CoEfficient Labs Team!

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