Thread by @kgao1412

1/ Today’s is a fun one. Going back to @mazzeo’s 2015 appearance on @eriktorenberg’s @ProductHunt podcast.

Buckle up – Mazz is one of the most insightful people out there, so this one is a bit longer than usual.

Listen here: product-hunt-radio.simplecast.com/episodes/0c2c4…

2/ I focused on “all things tech, and it was at a time when nobody gave a shit about it because there was just no money in it. So I was cheap. I was young, and it was an opportunity to not have to sit in purgatory for a long long time. So I kind of made that my focus.”

3/ we ended up incubating companies like @funnyordie out of that ecosystem where Will Ferrell was the client. We said, hey here’s a great opportunity for us to build a business around a sort of seminal talent.

4/ So my job was basically being this translator between tech and entertainment for a long, long time and then it sort of evolved naturally if I’m being honest.

5/ @sacca wasn’t looking for partners I think. It just became sort of an organic thing. We were friends. He and I met eight years ago at South by Southwest at a jam session.

5a/ Plug: If you haven’t already joined the Jam Sessions @genevachat group @mazzeo started, join here: app.genevachat.com/invite/f69bc10…

6/ We were all just mixing red and white because none of us knew what the hell was going on. We were just jamming. It was just fun. It was just easy. It was fun.

6a/ Plug 2: If you want to experience a @Mazzeo jam session, hop on @roadtrip_fm. He’s always around and down to jam. (DM or comment for invite)

7/ We were just talking about what we thought was going to be awesome and fun and cool. In that room you, there was no pretense. Nobody was fronting. Nobody was shutting other people down. If you had a thought and your thought was valid, pass the mic. Let that person speak.

8/ don’t sleep on people. Just put yourself in these situations. If you’re smart, you’re hustling.

9/ I think people smell bullshit real fast and so if you’re networking, stop. If that’s your goal, just stop. Go to a place. Meet a couple people. Have a good time. Have a good conversation.

10/ Be cautious with who you spend time with is a really big one.

11/ On how he learned to invest:

@hunterwalk, who’s here bouncing around somewhere, if you don’t him, then you should. He sums this up. He’s got serious KPIs for himself.

12/ How do you measure yourself? It’s like, what are your KPIs? We have a few of those. I measure our ability to see good deals, to select those deals better over time.

12a/ I wonder how much of a venture capitalists success comes from helping his/her portfolio companies vs picking the right startup. Has anyone actually done research on this?

13/ Sight improvement: “be at those events and I can meet a bunch of really good people and I can get a sense for the taste that they have, and if I pay attention to those signals and see which deals they’re investing into and read their blog posts and their tweets”

14/ On selection: “I think, I’m getting better at. I won’t know for a while”

“The hardest thing about this job is you don’t know whether you’re an idiot for about a decade”

15/ Service: When I was trained by guys like Richard Lovett and the team at CAA, they treat everything like a service job. I started in the mailroom. I started as a second assistant so I was an assistant to an assistant — like crashed my boss’s car on the first day.

15a/ The second you think you’re the one being pitched, you’re wrong. That’s not this job. This job is if you’re doing it right you are the one that’s going out, finding those great companies, and then [pitching] why you’re the one that should be doing that deal.

16/ we pass on deals all the time… What’s our unique killer thing that’s going to change the course or the trajectory of this company? If I can’t... I’ve passed on ones in the past that will haunt me forever because the returns will be amazing but I just can’t validate that.

17/ I think the VC line of pattern matching is interesting, but I think one of the interesting ways that gets understated is we care about storytelling more than most.

18/ explain it like you’re talking to your mom, and so Vera Mazzeo — bless her — is my guinea pig for all this stuff. I try to explain the companies that I’ve invested into to my mom, and if she gets it really well, I’m doing my job right. But we do that translation constantly.

19/ I think one of the best things that @ycombinator has done is it’s empowered engineers to be founders. It’s empowered a new generation –that never got polished at business school and that didn’t have crazy long resumes at Goldman or a consulting firm — to be founders.

20/ Messaging is important. Brand is important and “storytelling always beats a good spreadsheet” is a @sacca quote.

21/ We tend to back people who are freaks in some respect. There are people who are making an incredibly risky calculation often, and we try to find ones who are really mission driven. @mazzeo is the @wolfejosh of consumer—chips on shoulders put chips in pockets

22/ We tend to try to back what we call the boldly humble. We don’t think humility is a is a natural state for a lot of the founders.

22a/ are you aware of the weaknesses and can you convince people who know more than you in a category and manage those people to come in and build on your mission? That makes I think a great founder. What do I know? I’m still working on it.

23/ I wake up and it turned out when I left school, that was the stuff I was reading. I was reading all the tech blogs. It doesn’t feel like work to me, and it’s fun.

23a/ Shameless plug: my compilations page is a great place to hang out if you enjoy reading up on business and investing: 12mv2.com/compilations

24/ success… I think @km from [@KindredVentures] had this post recently, I’ve got X number of deals over the course of my life that are going define my taste, my mind, my selection, and my ability to help those companies survive. When I look back, am I proud of those decisions?

25/ If those are my selections — see everything, select the right things, service those to the best of my ability — the ultimate goal is – proud of those investments and what they’ve accomplished in the world.

26/ We’re a little bit more authentic and ask our LPs to stay quiet about that because we care about those sort of authentic relationships and being a little bit honest and not downside disappointing just because we’re trying to make a book look good.

27/ There’s a difference between the aspiring founder who wants to be a founder and is searching for their problem. I think that’s a hard step to get through. I think if the problem hits you smack in the face and you can’t stop thinking about it – that’s the founder mentality.

28/ Rank those by people who are great mentors because I think this whole business is about great apprenticeship, so who are great founders or people that you’ll be working with. They that are going to be great mentors for you.

End/ If you’ve gotten this far, you should subscribe to my @SubstackInc. I’ll be sharing annotated notes on letters from my compilations Mon-Thurs, and Fridays I’ll be posting a random tweetstorm to Twitter.

aletteraday.substack.com