Archives / April, 2017

Humility Over Pride

[a version of this was originally posted at Unreasonable.is. i was thinking about it today and wanted to repost it here with some additional commentary. in light of some of what we’re reading about in the tech press it would seem that a remind about this is due] __________________________ This advice would seem obvious, if only more people followed it. I was attending a board meeting recently where a company put up the following as one of its core values: “Humility over pride” As I think about how often I interact with people who are so ego-centric and hubris; as I consider how seldom these people show any self-awareness or emotional intelligence; and as I reflect on how universally unpleasant…

Reading Your VC Pitch Meeting

I’ve come to realize that many – most – entrepreneurs suck at reading pitch meetings. Frequently what I hear from a company CEO is completely uncorrelated to what I hear from the VC they were pitching. In thinking about why this is, the answer is actually relatively straightforward: VCs are predisposed to give good meetings. AND By being equivocal at the end of a meeting they preserve maximum option value. Parsing this a bit further, VCs take a lot of meetings. And they do so with varied motivations. Sometimes they’re legitimately interested in a market space or even a specific business. Sometimes another VC or entrepreneur asks them to take a meeting and they’re trying to preserve a relationship. Sometimes…