#MeetTheTeam Monday
Jacek Łubiński is a software engineer turned finance professional turned VC, in which he already has more than 8 years of experience. He’s analyzed thousands of startups, invested in more than 40 of them, and became a trusted supporter and sparring-partner for selected portfolio companies. He enjoys drinking yerba mate and reading books. What kind of books in particular? Let’s find out.
If you were to name a book that impressed you the most, which one would you choose?
Definitely “Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger”. Charles Munger is a lifelong business partner of Warren Buffet and the book is a great compendium of his thoughts on cognitive bias, mental models, and investing.
Talking about investing — what area of your work are you most passionate about?
Two things I love the most about my work. Firstly — meeting new founders all the time and discussing how they want to transform various industries, hearing their thoughts on value proposition, market trends, structuring the product, building the team, business model. Second, spending time with portfolio companies and supporting their teams. Going together with them through the ups and downs during the whole journey, helping them recruit talent, being a sparring partner on all things around strategy, plans, fundraising.
So start-ups from what sector you’d be happy to hear from?
I enjoy talking to startups from various verticals and also see that sometimes applying learnings from one vertical into another one really works. Right now I’m spending more time on agriculture, fintech, e-commerce infrastructure, crypto, and mobility.
Any piece of advice based on your experience that you’d share with founders?
I’m not sure who said it first, but I very much agree with “nail it, before you scale it”. Finding strong product-market fit and delivering a product that is 10x better is the most important task for an early stage startup.
And what’s then the best piece of advice you’ve ever heard?
“Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest” — this one or many more by Naval Ravikant!
Tell us more about your preferable work environment — what kind of people do you like to surround yourself with?
Hyper curious, self aware, honest, optimistic, and those who love what they do.
And what are your favourite tools — apps and software — that facilitate your work?
Two apps I love and use a lot every day are Notion and BlueMail. Notion is our shared brain at Market One Capital. Vast majority of our internal knowledge and relevant information is shared there, including deal flow, Investment Committee memos, deal team meeting notes, to dos, info on portfolio companies, resources, templates, theses for hunting and more. BlueMail is the best email management app on Android in my opinion, much better than Gmail or Outlook.
Now, last but not least, would you share with us your last lesson learned?
Never underestimate market size :-) We’ve analysed several cases of startups where we were too conservative on the potential certain trends would have. In particular, the potential for significantly expanding the TAMs of these projects. I’m trying to make less of these mistakes in the future.
