Week 48: The now normal, remote-first, and some links
A weird week. Results and lots of questions. Answers later.
This was a strange week for me. Not bad, just strange. I got my booster shot on Monday and was sleepy on Tuesday. Some meetings I had been looking forward to had to be postponed due to the sickness of some of the participants. The pandemic seems to have very different effects on my other worlds, and it is hard for me to find patterns.
The now normal in my APX world is strange, but the core of our business is working well. We are meeting brilliant founder teams (more than ever before), we are investing (more than ever before) in November and December, and we also see a lot of follow-on investment activity in our portfolio, and we can join (and sometimes drive) follow on financing rounds. Most of this is happening with digital meetings and through digital channels.
Everything is strange regarding physical meetings and days at the office: Security checks, empty offices, and scarce moments of real-life serendipity. I know that I am super lucky and complaining on a very high level that this is my now normal. These times must be bizarre to horrible for others who need the “real world” to do their business. I genuinely hope that there will be a liveable new normal soon.
Remote First - How we work
We have been remote-first for more than a year. Since we figure out how to set up the most performant version of APX, we know that we need to organize ourselves as a dynamic system. Doing this is great and challenging at the same time:
great because we can continuously improve and learn from how we do things to do them better.
and a challenge because the only thing that is for sure is change.
We need time as a company to reflect and ideate how we want to work when we have many places to work from and setups. Lots of questions we need answers for:
How often do we want/ have to be in the office?
What kind of infrastructure do we provide to everyone?
How do certain things work legally?
At which level do we make rules? General vs. team level?
How does remote infrastructure work purchasing-wise?
What is our tech stack? How often do we want to change it?
How do hybrid meetings work?
Shall we have one day without internal meetings? Which is the best day?
What are best practices and resources, and how do we document and share them?
How does digital onboarding work for new colleagues?
How can we have the best feedback and learning loops and continuously improve and learn as individuals and as an organization?
And the minor but super annoying details: We are on the quest to find the ideal headset that we can use in various work environments. This is super hard, and we need to try call-center headsets. The active noise canceling in all other headsets we have tried does not work in rooms with several people talking as well.
Lots of questions. I will share some outcomes after our offsite next week, that, unfortunately, will only happen virtually.
What I watched, read, and experienced:
I enjoyed watching Christian’s and Uma Thurman’s conversation on psychedelics and their effects on mental health because I am interested in the topic: Can Psychedelics Improve Mental Health? A Conversation with Christian
I have very much enjoyed played with ghost.org because it is a great platform.
My new Oura 3 ring has arrived, and I am excited to see how its data is similar or different from my apple watch. I also thought about how my apple watch has taken over my left wrist, and my nice mechanical watches from my more materialistic days are locked away.
I am looking forward to two new books to read for me on the weekend:
In German: Logbuch Digitale Achtsamkeit. I had the pleasure of doing some synchronous writing sessions with Sophia and Lukas.
Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet, recommended to me several times. Now finally, in my library.
I watched this on youtube:
A mostly thorough guide to learning electronic music production by red means recording. A great intro into electronic music with some good resources to dig deeper.
I rediscovered this vital review of the most expensive toaster and had a great time watching it with one of the twins. I am still thinking about if I need one.
I enjoyed watching Doug deMuro’s off-road review of the Rivian R1T. If available in Germany, this (or the R1S) would be my next car next to an electric Volkswagen.
Thank you for reading this far! Next week I have a lot of virtual meetings, and I hope that a some of what we will discuss in these meetings will be shareable. :-)
Have a good time, and cheers
Joerg