Week 26: Weekend Trips, sharpening tools, DeFi
This was an interesting week. Lots of work and also a lot more time at the office.
Weekend Trip to Thale
Friday last week, we left in the evening when the twins were done with hacking entrepreneurship. We drove for two hours to Thale and checked in at a small hotel. We had a drink and went to bed early. After an early breakfast, we hiked Bodetal.
When we want to get out of the city and spend some time in nature, we usually go to Elbsandsteingebirge. This time going to Hartz was also nice and faster to get to. I am such happy hotels are open again, and we can make short trips on the weekends again.
Sharpening tools
When you are a blacksmith, you know your tools pretty well. A hammer is a hammer, and you know how to operate your hammer, anvil, and forge and have a good idea of what you can do with all the tools you have in your workshop. This does not necessarily mean you are a good blacksmith, but you at least can have a good idea of what tools you need, have, and how to keep them working well.
Henric (my Co-MD) and I talked about the tools we use in our job and how we strive to know how to operate them and use them as best as possible. One challenge is also to help our colleagues to be on a constant learning curve on how we do things. This alone is a challenge when new colleagues join, and we are in a constant mode of learning and changing how we want to work with our tools. As all of them are digital, we call them our tech stack, and we have created onboarding and continuous learning formats for and with each other.
What makes this even more challenging (not complaining here) is that the functions and features of the tools we use in our tech stack are constantly changing. Coming back to the blacksmith example: your forge, anvil, and hammer do not upgrade themselves every few weeks and offer a set of new features and functions over time.
To have the best tech stack, it is not enough to pick your tools once, but it is also important to choose them, learn how they develop, match them with what you do, and also be open to new and maybe better and faster ways to get done what you want to do. And it would be best if you took care to create an organization that can take people along on the journey.
DeFi
After figuring out more over the last weeks, I started to swap some coins and am learning more about yield farming. This is a tweetstorm by @kedric about how to cluster and diversify risk and reward in a yield farming portfolio. And when you are looking for a nice to read and quick intro to DeFi, check out this piece.
I am happy I am digging into the topic with Ole, so there is someone I can ping-pong ideas and questions with. Through the topic of DeFi, I have also rediscovered Discord, which is used as a means of communication in lots of areas and on a lot of topics.
Serendipity Meetings
I had my first real-world meetings with investors this week after only having virtual meetings for the past months. Every time, I asked one of my colleagues in the office to join for a few minutes and bring their skills, knowledge, or first-hand experience with portfolio companies to the table. I think the meetings were better with these surprise and instant inputs. I really want to figure out how serendipity can happen in virtual meetings as well, and I am excited to build the work culture of the future that will definitely be hybrid.
This is what I read and watched this week:
Apple Music Hi-Res audio done right by Jonny Darko on Youtube.
JP and the Antifa Academy
Understanding DAI
Sifted.com on how to have an impact as a VC
A lot of videos, articles, and sites around our family’s summer vacation.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you found something useful.
Cheers
Joerg