Week 5 - Blast from the Past, Conversations, Values, and Valuations
Typing faster than you can think, a 25 years old bet, clubhouse, conversations on values and valuations, and some things I read.
Hey there!
This was an intense week again. Lots of home office, one day in the APX office, and tons of virtual meetings with my APX colleagues who are spread all over the world right now. Finally, I had some time to read again.
Let me start with two blasts from the past…
A blast from the past 1: Type faster than you think?
When I started university in the early ’90s of the last millennium, some friends and I started our first company, denkwerk, not much later. While working there, we always joked that you should type as fast as you can think. (In case you think linear) Back then, I practiced typing and started to enjoy different kinds of keyboards. Until today I regularly change my keyboards to keep on being a fast typer: I use my MacBook’s keyboard, I have an apple keyboard on my desk I am writing this newsletter on, and in the drawer next to me is a ZSA Moonlander that I use when I type longer texts. Switching from Qwertz to Qwerty layouts is also something that keeps me engaged. This week I felt the need to practice typing again and found these resources that I find helpful:
keybr.com: Here, you can learn to type without looking at the keyboard. Different languages and keyboard layouts are possible.
10fastfingers.com: You can test your typing speed here and improve it through practice.
In my experience, 10 minutes of practicing every day make a difference.
A blast from the past 2: The 25 years old bet.
In 1995 I was living and studying in cologne, denkwerk was a young company, and I spent quite a bit of my online time on the Well. The founders of Wired Magazine and some of their editors were also regular participants in the discussions there. There were interesting discussions on the influence of technology on our societies' development, and we were discussing questions like, what will win? Proprietary online services like CompuServe and AOL or the free internet. This discussion is still critical, only that the participants and roles have changed quite a bit. Back then, there was a discussion about Luddites and the people who embraced all the networked world's new possibilities. And there was an article in WIRED with a conversation of Wired Editor Kevin Kelly (a huge source of inspiration for me) and techno critic Kirkpatrick Sale which led to a bet between the two: Sale bet society would break down within a quarter of a century.
The 25 years were over on the 31st of December 2020. Read the story in WIRED here
Discussions & Conversations
Clubhouse
Every Tuesday at 12:00, my friend Ole and I have a conversation with a friend on clubhouse. Next Tuesday, we are talking to Joana Breidenbach, one of my betterplace.org co-founders and a role model in many dimensions of my life. Join us next Tuesday (This will be in German)
Values in founder teams
We discussed values and how relevant they are in founder teams in a meeting with one of the companies we have invested in recently. One of the questions was on how to get a discussion on values started. A good starter can be: do we want to be fair or correct? I think both approaches are absolutely ok, and it might be the case that different stakeholders will be treated correctly and others fairly. Another important factor is the alignment of values within the team: I do not think that you will build a successful company when the core values of the founders are not aligned. From an investor’s point of view, the founders' alignment is something we look for in our interactions before making our investment decision.
Talking about valuation with investors
In several meetings with founders this week, we discussed how to talk about your companies valuation in financing rounds. One of my all-time favorite articles about valuation discussions is by Marc Suster. When discussing with investors, you need to find the balance between:
What is the capital needed to get to the next stage?
Future proof captable: does the team still have enough shares to stay motivated
The trust level of the investor of the teams’ ability to get it done (past achievements/ track record help a lot)
The founders focus: Balancing between execution and fundraising. Founders will have to raise funds from time to time. Their ability to do this successfully is important. Still, usually, investors invest because they primarily believe in the team and the idea of the company, and the founders’ ability to raise future rounds secondarily. (Being able to fundraise an essential capability nevertheless)
Things I have read:
I have been re-reading Joana’s Book New Work needs Inner Work over the past week because we are working on our organizational structure at APX.
"What would this look like if it were easy? is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re not redlining, you’re not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process." (Timothy Ferriss, Tribe of Mentors)
One of the books on my desk (I ordered the paper version some time ago) is The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. When I take a break, I open it and just read what I see. For example, this is what I just read:
“A happy person isn’t someone who´s happy all the time.
It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.” (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, p. 136)
Thank you for your time, and have a great next week!
Joerg