What I struggle with as a VC
I’m a big fan of learning from what other people have already mastered. In a knowledge worker World it’s the only way to grow and move forward.
For any startup founder I would advocate a healthy dose of continuous personal development: coaches, advisors, mentors and peer networking can all be really powerful tools in a founders toolkit over time.
I like to practice what I preach so this week I feel super lucky to be in Boulder, Colorado to attend the Reboot VC Bootcamp led by Jerry Colonna, Brad Feld and the Reboot team.
“Uncover your authentic leadership style and become the best board member/investor/supporter you can be.”
(Reboot VC Bootcamp)
I’m a long time listener of the Reboot podcast series (well worth checking it out here), I’ve attended a previous workshop led by Jerry in London and I’ve also had amazing endorsements from founders who have attended previous Founder Bootcamps.
As part of the application process for the Bootcamp I was asked to describe what I struggle with in my role as a VC. Below is what I wrote:
Uncertainty — this may sound odd for someone investing in high risk startups but I still struggle with the amount of uncertainty in what we do, specifically in relation to the outcomes for each portfolio company over a long period of time. My mindset can shift from hero (everything is amazing) to zero (everything is doomed) in a short space of time. Founders assume that investors are less exposed to this rollercoaster of emotion because we have a spread across our portfolio. In practice VCs are nearly always one failure away from disaster.
Long feedback loop — we build our whole careers in VC around very few key decisions and yet the feedback loop on each one of those decisions tends to be very long. I love to learn and feel like I’m getting better at something but it’s difficult with relatively few data points over a long period of time.
There’s no single way to build the future — I’m not short of opinions but I also like to be open minded. Every time I come up with a rule-of-thumb in our industry for the “right” or “best” way to do something, a founder will blow it away by achieving success in a completely different way. I love this about our industry but I find that it makes it difficult to give really clear advice, or have the courage of my convictions in the face of strong opposition (e.g. around a board table).
Responsibility — firstly, the responsibility of investing other people’s money and, secondly, being a board member and investor means that many careers and lives are impacted by the decisions we make (particularly in loss making companies where there is so much dependence on the next funding round).
Focusing my time and energy — there are many different aspects to the VC role (we end up being a one-person marketing, sales, implementation and customer success team). I frequently feel like I’m doing an average job at many things rather than being great at one or two.
Learning to say no (without the guilt of letting people down) — there is no shortage of invitations for different ways to spend my time. Most of them I could easily justify to myself as being valuable in some way. But I can’t do all of them so I need to be OK saying ‘no’ and accepting that by not doing one thing it means I can do something else even better.
Volume of inbound — integrity in what I do is really important to me. I struggle with the concept of not being able to reply (meaningfully, or at all) to everyone who asks for my help or feedback, and yet I also know that trying to do so would take me away from higher value tasks (e.g. my team and portfolio companies) or my family and personal life.
Cognitive bias — it would be simpler not to know about them! Once I started to acknowledge my own biases (and those of my team) it became much more difficult to follow my gut and/or make decisions without constantly questioning them — you can drive yourself mad with self doubt!
This was really helpful to write down. What do you struggle with in your role?
(Important note: I absolutely love what I do and wouldn’t change it for the World. That’s mainly to do with the people I get to work with and the intellectual challenge. But it still doesn’t seem to get any easier over time.)
