The 2010s was the decade of the Entrepreneur.
The 2020s will be the decade of the Investor.
“Recovery was long and brutal (I’ll spare you the details of how many parking lots I’ve vomited in). But the hellish experience forced me to confront something I’d never truly examined: time itself”
Eric Markowitz
Something just didn’t feel right
This morning I was reviewing a startup’s investment deck.
Nothing unusual there — I obviously do this a lot and the deck was all very professional, made sense and I don’t doubt that some investors will back it.
But… but…..
But for me something just didn’t feel right.
Then I realised what it was: The founders are not building this to last.
The startup looked good on paper and had lots going for it, but a lot of those good things had to line up exactly as the founders had planned for there to be the huge success they said they were aiming for.
Except that’s not how things turn out.
Plans go to plan for a while, but outlier successes take a long time and there are events and circumstances that come along and spoil all those best laid plans…
Thanks Eric
While I was thinking about what didn’t feel quite right I realised that thanks to Eric Markowitz I now have some handy terminology for this part of my evaluation process.
Given Eric’s recent announcement about his book — here — the perfect evaluation question came to me, “Is this built to OUTLAST?”1.
I was so pleased with it (and myself 😆) that I immediately added that question to my ‘Investment Process & Checklist’ Notion page.
In other news
🌐 I have revamped my website — check it out here. Any & all feedback welcome.
🤖 I went to a ‘Boady AI’ dinner last week — thanks to Alan Newton for getting me involved and to Christina Minshull for hosting. You can read Christina’s post on what it’s all about here.
🍻 And this coming week I’m scouting out venues for the 9others Summer Party in London. All being well the Summer Party will be on Thursday 26th June — I’ll share the link to sign up here first so make sure you’re a subscriber to that newsletter if you’re keen.
More from me?
If you like my writing you can get more by buying my book, ‘Find your 9others’. It’s on Amazon here.
And if you’ve already read ‘Find your 9others’ please leave an Amazon review here.
Q&A
🆓 Free subscribers get a short preview and all free public posts.
💰 Paid subscribers can request a video call to ask me anything and talk about the things I don’t share anywhere else.
💰💰💰 Founding Members get all paid benefits plus you get to WhatsApp me unlimited questions for discussion, you get a one hour discussion session once a quarter plus a great lunch in London, on me.
Important: None of these posts are investment advice. If you are thinking about investing you should seek the advice of a suitably qualified independent advisor.
#CapitalAtRisk
I.e. Would this company make it into the 2525 edition of Eric’s book?!