Week 23: Acknowledge, Success Dimensions, and Coffee
This week with the APX team, a coffee distributor and some links.
Hey there! I had a typical week, one day “shorter” than usual because of a holiday.
What does success look like?
Founders
On Tuesday, we had a nice investment committee meeting discussing several investments. When we started APX, we talked a lot about “what does success look like?” and “how do we get there?”. One of the dimensions of success for us is the quality of the founders. Back in 2018, we talked about how great it would be when we get to invest in companies started by founders from our networks who have successfully exited their companies, can choose their investors, know us well and choose us because they have a clear idea, what they expect from us. We were able to make one of these investments this week. Another idea of success was that founders who are starting their companies out of our investors (and who know what they are doing) choose us as their initial investors. We made an investment in a team like this on Tuesday as well.
Although this is not the final incarnation of success, it is still a great feeling to see that our ideas when we started APX are turning into realities. Usually, we are not very good at celebrating successes. Still, in this case, we at least managed to acknowledge that it was happening, and we took a moment to think that one of our visions of success was happening. Do you celebrate these moments? Do you notice them? How do you deal with this personally and on an organizational level?
Colleagues
There were two other great moments for me this week: Another vision of success for us is getting great people to work with us. I think I have amazing colleagues and all the change we had over the past 4.5 years makes sense to me. Some people left because they or we figured we did not fit on a cultural level; others left to join or start a company (mostly in our portfolio…). We understand ourselves as a company that allows people to develop their full potential over time. Until two years ago, I was convinced that only very few people would be able to work with us longer than 3 to 4 years because the career path is quite clear here: you learn to be a very early stage investor, do it for 3 years and then move on to either become an entrepreneur or make a career in the venture capital industry.
But then we changed something: we are turning into a venture fund. This allows us to think in fund generations and also enables us to give our colleagues even more opportunities to grow and learn. With our portfolio companies getting increasingly mature and the number of deals we can make (40 new investments in 2021 and likely 50 this year and the follow-on rounds that are luckily happening), we all get to do a lot. And we continuously learn how we can make our portfolio more valuable by supporting the founders. The other two great moments were meeting two new colleagues who decided to join us. Super happy they are (and will be around.)
A sad (but happy) moment was having a final meeting with a colleague of mine who decided to leave us. As he is joining one of our portfolio companies, he is not gone, but it was cool to have him as a colleague. Also, because we have known each other for some time, when he was young, he babysat my twin sons, and we talked about what to do with one’s life when he finished school. When he applied for a job with us a few years later, I did not participate in the interview process because I did not want any of my colleagues to feel influenced by me. Now he is moving on.
Next week will be about fundraising.
Henric and I will be attending Super Venture (and Super Return). A conference in Berlin for General Partners and Limited Partners. We have planned a hack for the conference with friends, and we will host a fundraising dinner. I am excited to see how this will work. And I will share with you what is shareable.
Coffee
I love coffee, and I love preparing it. I experiment with different coffees and ways to prepare them all the time. For my espresso workflow, I bought a 3d printed coffee distribution tool but could not figure out how to put it together. Dina (who does not drink coffee ever) looked at it, unscrewed it, and put it together without knowing what it was. It is working well. Here is a picture:
What I watched and read
I still face the issue that many things I read are in newsletters and behind paywalls.II will share what I can share, and if there are exciting pieces, I will also share content behind a paywall.
An interesting piece on growing followership on Instagram:
I have been playing the drums since I was eight years old. I can only listen to Tool when I can focus on the music. What Danny Carey is doing is super high-end and deserves full attention:
I had to laugh about Casey’s 10 vlogging commandments. I might have to do 10 video conference commandments.
I watched some WWDC 2022 content, and this is a nice summary:
Some of the things I read:
I read a great piece on peer coaching that I find very inspiring as it connects many dots for me.
I discovered Ed Batistas “The art of self-coaching” hub that contains all his Stanford Course materials. (How can I make the time to process all of this?)
I read a book on photography and storytelling by Finn Beales
Thank you for reading. I hope you found something meaningful. Have a great week!
Joerg