Week 24: Parents, TMM Deal Campfire, DeFi, Future,
This was a nice week. One more week and my vaccination will be considered “active.” I had a normal week with some time in the office and many virtual and a few real-life meetings.
The second half of this week got warmer and warmer here in Berlin. Right now (Friday around noon), it is way more than 35 degrees Celsius outside, and as we do not believe in air condition here in Germany, it is not too much cooler indoors.
Last weekend we visited our parents in Cologne.
We drove to cologne Friday evening and spend two days there. We met with our parents (whom we had not met for nearly a year), and the twins and I did some walks through the city.
At my mother’s place, the boys and I went through some of my old things like my old MacBookDuo, my sister’s old VC20, and some old books of mine. We found this:
Does anyone of you remember the whole earth catalog? Luckily one of the first people I met after going online in 1992/93 was Howard Rheingold (his name might have played a role). Through him, I became a member of TheWell, where a lot of my internet socialization happened. My well.com email address is still around, and some of you might have it as my private email. Another connection I still have with this early internet world and its very optimistic view into the future is my longnow.org membership.
Campfire TMM
On Thursday, I did a TMM (Thursday Morning Meeting, a long-standing APX format) with some APX founders. Every Thursday morning, we invite a guest to discuss something relevant or create an opportunity for the founders to share experiences. This week we did a cam fire TMM. I started with some thoughts on building companies and their financing. Here are some of my thoughts:
When you build your company, it is about turning your dreams into reality. No matter how you look at or how you call the steps, there are certain things you need to have to do:
Dream or Idea (depending on how you look at it)
Quantification and qualification of 1.
Goals (one might argue that you can exchange step 3 and 4)
Strategy
Plan
Execution
Understanding the reality you create and feedback loops (into all 1-6 points)
To do this, you need to answer at least these two questions:
What does success look like?
How do we get there?
There are obviously a lot more questions that need answers, but these two are a good start. When you can quantify and qualify what you want to do, you need to do it. The challenge is that most of the time, when you execute your strategy and plan, the results tend to be different from your plan. Then you adapt or pivot your strategy and plans.
The financing thoughts I will share in one of my future letters.
One-pager
This week Henric (my Co MD and I) wrote a onepager for an idea we wanted to discuss. We one-pagers quite often with founders. I enjoyed it a lot because we could draw a lot of the information we needed from notes, concepts, and models we have built over the past few months. So the act of writing the onepager did not take long.
I also always enjoy working “into” a form. This means you can focus on the output and results after spending time researching, thinking, and working on details.
DeFi
My friend Ole and I always like to learn. And sometimes we learn together. We have started a DeFi Masterclass on maven.com. I love trying new learning formats, and the speed and connectedness of cohort-based learning resonate well with my learning style so far. The first hour was already super intense and had quite some impact on my content consumption this week, as you will see later.
First dinner with friends Post Corona
On Thursday, a friend organized a surprise belated birthday party for her partner. I very much enjoyed meeting more than 6 people at once and having multiple conversations around the table(s). Looking forward to more real-world meetings in the future again.
What I read and watched this week (and think is worth sharing)
A16z has launched Future this week and is also a media company now. This article is about composability, which is an important concept in decentralized finance: Composability
As everything is opening up in Berlin again, these are some of my favorite restaurants and some I will go to over the next weeks and months.
We love wood. This is our new supplier for bowls.
Dogo, one of our APX portfolio companies, is one of Apple’s “5 Apps to Look out For”
I love coffee, and I always try new ways to prepare it. There are countless V60 methods. This is a good one.
This is it for today. I hope you found something interesting, and thank you for reading.
Have a great week and cheers
Joerg