Last week I had lunch with a designer that is building her app (and future startup). Slowly and with a lot of effort she has moved forward. She is not ready to raise money but she wants to know what it would take and where to start.
We met for lunch in San Francisco to talk about her next steps.
She asked me if investors would actually have lunch or coffee with founders at this early stage. I said “Sure! It’s common”. We went on to talk about how she ended up in San Francisco. She comes from Eastern Europe and has lived in several countries. We talk about her husband, her family and where she wanted to be 5–10 years from today.
We talk about making friends in the US. How difficult it is for a foreigner who just landed in the Bay Area as if you jump with a parachute from a plane. She mentioned how hard is to create real friendships and how most Americans are not used becoming friends quickly. She told an interesting story about inviting to a barbecue to a person she only saw once and how that person felt so strange about it. She couldn't understand. I felt the same when I just came. Maybe Latin Americans and Eastern Europe have more in common than we think.
Then she asked me another question that motivated this post. “Do you always want to know personally the founder?.” Which I found an interesting question for someone to ask me.
Most of investors try to focus on three things today: product, market and team (not necessary in order). They usually are looking for product/market fit. If they don't find it interesting enough they won't take the time to hear the founder. Some people expect to hear the founder for the first time and just feel blown away. Some take enough time, Chris O’Donnell takes six months.
This is when it hit me that actually it was true that investors optimized for time and investment and not for the person.
You have a limited amount of time. And as everyone repeats over and over again “time is your most precious asset”. Yes, that’s true, but at what cost? Is time your more precious asset at the cost of looking good to the entrepreneur? This is a game of people. We are a society.
The most important asset is not your time but how it’s spent with others.
That’s why everyone always mentions that family is the most important and that spending time with them is the best. You are not optimizing for time here but for the experience that you get out of it.
Time is express in ourselves as the feeling we have with each others.
I like to spend time with founders. Everyone repeats over and over that when an investor funds your company you “marry him/her”. So if we are comparing investors with marriage why are we “fast dating” founders. As I dated my wife for more than a year, why wouldn't I do the same with founders? Why wouldn't I take my time to understand who she really is?
We take our time to do the due diligence and see that the metrics and the market are right, but we don't spend enough time with the founders. People are influenced by their past and will evolve to become a different person in the future. As markets that you can't predict, people are also unpredictable.
You need to really know them and keep learning about them through their lives to actually understand them.
Funding a company is investing in the people that created it and will build it. They will mold their personality and values into it. The company will be an extension of them. Even if they should always remember that they are not their company (other post, here) this one will be affected by the way they are.
So take your time to know the people you are investing in. The time you invest is more important than the money you will give later. Remember that this is a people game, not a money one.
