Week 47: Traveling and then a lot of work.
Vacation, Food Poisoning, a lot of work, Focus, Family and Remote Work
The last few weeks were intense. We were on vacation; I ate something wrong and then had a lot of work.
Italy
We made a road trip. Our initial plan to go to California was impossible due to travel restrictions, so we improvised. I rented a car, and we left Berlin for Italy. We traveled for two weeks, and we did not plan ahead of time. We spent a few days in Tuscany and then visited Cinque Terre, the Amalfi Coast, and Pompei and Naples. Then we spent a few days in Rome, dropped the twins at the airport as they visited a friend of theirs who had moved from Berlin to Amsterdam in the summer, and drove back home.
Back in Berlin
The first day home again, we ordered our dinner, and something in made me “unusable” for nearly a week. Once recovered, a period of intense work started. Unfortunately, almost everything I worked on is either boring or is super exciting for me but cannot be shared (yet). During the last few weeks, I did not read a lot I found shareable, and so I decided to take a break sending newsletters. I hope the non-shareable topics will soon become shareable, and I am very much looking forward to reflecting on them with you.
Corona times and autopilot
With the infection numbers continuously going up in Germany and new measures taking effect, I have the impression many people switch to autopilot-life-mode again. They are just getting through the days and taking comfort out of routines. With fewer and fewer office days, the chance of external random input and serendipity is minimized, and people are waiting for times to get better. How do you experience these days?
Things I read, found, and saw:
I have been using centered.app. It helps me to focus and get into flow mode. It will only work for select personalities and work styles, but it is an excellent tool for me.
I have been playing around with pitch.com, rows.com, and coda.io. They give a glimpse of the future of documents and working.
I think that many organizations pick their toolkit in the beginning and then develop a reluctance to change. On the one hand, this is important and good as change can be pretty disruptive to productivity. Still, I also think that only counting on the innovation and evolution of your existing toolkit can be risky because you might miss out on mega productivity boosters.One of my favorite examples (a small one) is the versioning and collaborative authoring of documents.
We finally made our deal terms publicly available. We think this is a shortcut for both the founders and us and, in the end, future co-investors. As a founder, you need to do due diligence on your investor, and as the deal terms and contracts are an essential core of the relationship, we think it makes sense to be as transparent as possible as early as possible. This way, the founders can check out the contracts we want to close with them before we even meet. We think we have great early-stage contracts that are both correct and fair. A lot of the explaining we do we put into the comments. I hope you enjoy the read in case you are into contract reading. :-)
Fred Wilson wrote a great post on why $100mm Post Money seed rounds can be a challenge later.
I rediscovered my favorite cauliflower recipe and prepared it a few times.
Peter Rigaud took amazing and fun pictures of my family and me. (ask me about them when we meet if you are interested)
Chris Dixon’s Twitter thread on what to buy or build next when you have a successful product
Thank you a lot for reading so far! I hope you found something meaningful.
Have a great week
Joerg