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Happy Sunday.

Once again, I’m in flight today. This time, I’m heading back to Chicago to begin moving the Airstream over to Waterloo, ON for the week. I’m coming for you, Canada.

I launched my first syndicate deal this past Wednesday and it was oversubscribed by Friday morning. (I can’t publish all the details here but at a high level: I’m investing $25K and the syndicate is investing $75K — this will represent the last $100K going into their $500K round which is closed already. They’ve got strong revenue, killer team, reasonable terms and the growth engine is clearly working. All the specifics are listed inside the syndicate deal so click the link above if you want to learn more.) If you’re still interested in backing the deal, you should do so — I’ll be speaking to the founder early next week to see if he’s willing to take more from us. 🙂

If you’re an active investor (angel or VC) or founder/entrepreneur (with revenue, growth or other skills to share), I’d love to have you join me on some of the upcoming tech tour stops. You’ll meet policymakers, investors and founders and share your story / skills along the way — hit reply if you’re interested. Upcoming stops include Waterloo, Fargo, Kelowna, Vancouver and many more. I hope you’ll join me.

Last week, we had Neville Medhora on the weekly Brain Trust call. Suffice it to say, it was the best call yet. You can apply for the Brain Trust here:www.resultsjunkies.com/brain-trust

1. “Early revenue (and early revenue growth) is probably less meaningful than it was a couple of years ago.” [Link] [Tweet]

Three scenarios you should consider when deciding how to grow your business:

• Unprofitable unit economics and unprofitable business == probably time to shut it down.
• Profitable unit economics and profitable company == you’re living the dream — go, go, GO.
• Profitable unit economics and unprofitable company == look into raising outside capital.

2. “Use 20 percent as a benchmark to keep your cap table clean.” [Link] [Tweet]

An observation on founders from this last week in St. Louis (and, frankly, all the other #RJtechtour stops around the country this year): if you’re complaining about the angels/VCs in your home town, you’re just lazy.

If you want to raise money from the coasts, start building/talking/acting like your peers on the coasts. Complaining locally only shows that you’re not actually willing to do what it takes to grow personally and professionally.

3. “We don’t change all that much as we put on years and gain cynical expressions.” [Link] [Tweet]

As recently as ~10 years ago, a long tenure at your previous company usually meant that you were loyal / hard working / whatever. Today, a long tenure at your previous company shows lack of ambition (unless your previous company grew fast as all hell and you were hanging on to the rocketship).

As founders, you want to be hiring people that self-identify as wanting to start their own thing one day.

4. “The problem is that the slow road to success doesn’t typically result in venture returns.” [Link] [Tweet]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re considering raising outside money and you haven’t taken the time to learn about venture economics, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

When an investor chooses not to invest in your business, they’re rarely judging the idea. Rather, you haven’t done a good enough job fitting your company’s growth potential with their capital’s return requirements.

5. “Trucks are unsexy, and that’s why we’re doing it.” [Link] [Tweet]

The technology is going to be the easy part of this transition. Wait till the truck drivers lobby / unions / groups start wading into the discussion.

6. “If a product doesn’t solve a problem, no one cares.” [Link] [Tweet]

If you’re spending >25% of any conversation (or meeting) explaining the product, you’re doing it wrong. Always start with a user story — ideally, a real user that finds value in your product. Always.

7. “Having billion dollar companies sitting quietly in the portfolio’s of VC firms doesn’t do anyone any good.” [Link] [Tweet]

I don’t think anyone would disagree with this author’s assertion that we need to get these companies to go public in order to generate wealth for more people. The real problem is that many of the companies with those high valuations simply haven’t grown into them yet (and it’s unclear if some of them ever will). More importantly, the investors that wrote those high valuations aren’t excited by the possibility that they might have overpriced the previous round.

In the real world, valuations are a multiple of earnings. In the venture world, valuations are speculations on the future value. There’s a huge difference there.

8. “Account expansion demonstrates initial product market fit. Customers are buying more of the product they trialled.” [Link] [Tweet]

The three predictors of whether a company will successfully raise their Series A (in order of importance):

1. Negative churn (or account expansion)
2. Revenue
3. Revenue growth.

Go read the article — trust the data.

9. “Things don’t happen for a reason. But you can find purpose and meaning in things that do happen.” [Link] [Tweet]

It’s hard not to read this and find yourself nodding in agreement with everything. The key message: find a better way.

10. “founders should possess at least a basic understanding of the different types of angels they’ll encounter.” [Link] [Tweet]

I’ll say it again: if you want to raise money now or at some point in the future, you need to take the time to learn the business of venture capital.

Firehose

You can get the full stream of the things I read, it’s all on Twitter — follow me: @paulsingh. Sometimes I write stuff too. You can always find me in the Brain Trust, apply to join.

Have a great weekend!

-P

Happy Saturday.

Once again, I’m in flight today. This time, I’m heading back to DC for some much-needed R&R after a busy schedule in Lincoln and Omaha, NE. I’ll be spending a couple days later this week exploring the Kansas City, MO startup scene.

If you’re an active investor (angel or VC) or founder/entrepreneur (with revenue, growth or other skills to share), I’d love to have you join me on some of the upcoming tech tour stops. You’ll meet policymakers, investors and founders and share your story / skills along the way — hit reply if you’re interested. (Upcoming stops include St Louis, Waterloo, Fargo and many more. I hope you’ll join me.)

Last week, we had Mesh Lakhani on the weekly Brain Trust call. We covered everything from how he chooses which funds/startups to invest in, how he built Future Investor and specific tactics he used to get into the highly competitive world of tech investing just a few years ago. We’ll keep doing this each Friday and I’ll bring on other special guests from time to time. You can apply for the Brain Trust here:www.resultsjunkies.com/brain-trust

1. “Essentially, I want to compare your life to mine as a teenager.” [Link] [Tweet]

Most of the people in today’s workforce are going to be the last generation that lived in a time before we all carried screens in our pockets. We learned multiplication tables in school, went to the library to use the encyclopedias and checked our mailboxes once a day. Then the Internet happened.

2. “You are not alone. You are not crazy. You are not a failure.” [Link] [Tweet]

Everyone’s struggling with something, it’s OK to talk about it with the people around you.

3. I’m leading a Syndicate on AngelList (for companies I meet on the #RJTechTour this year). Get access to my deals: [Link] [Tweet]

I know, I know. I’ve been saying this forever but I really don’t know how else to give you access to the same investments I’m doing. You can back the Syndicate with as little as $1,000 and you get to review each deal individually to decide whether you want to participate — there really is nothing for you to lose. Back my Syndicate and start looking at interesting investments I’m making today: angel.co/paulsingh/syndicate

For the first deal I’ll be pushing to the Syndicate soon, the company is currently earning ~$25K MRR and growing that by ~15% MoM. Current investors have also invested in Gusto (previously Zenpayroll), Indinero, TeeSpring, FitMob, Mattermark and Luxe Valet are some of their other well-known investments.

Again, you won’t see the details of the deal itself unless you back my Syndicate. So, yeah. You’ve got nothing to lose.

4. “being a good early stage investor is much more art than a science.” [Link] [Tweet]

It takes more than having a little bit of cash to be a good early stage investor. You’d be surprised to learn just how many people I’ve met along the tech tour this year that don’t seem to recognize that simple fact.

5. “Raise a $1m seed?  You’ll need to sell for $10m to make everyone happy.” [Link] [Tweet]

For all the talk that founders have about how much money they want to raise or how high their valuation ought to be, I’d love to see more questions around what metrics those same founders think are necessary to achieve a 10X valuation increase.

6. “It’s not money until you can buy beer with it.” [Link] [Tweet]

If you want to better understand why VCs make the decisions they make, start by reading this.

7. “Maps shape how we see the world.” [Link] [Tweet]

I grew up with maps (and hope my daughter loves them as much as I do) but I’ve never seen some of these. Just look at the one depicting the trade partners of the US and China. Eye opening, to say the least.

8. “You don’t want to be king of the garden gnomes.” [Link] [Tweet]

Another observation on the tech tour this year: each city seems to have it’s share of power players that wants nothing more than to be the biggest fish in the little pond of their own city. Seems like wasted breath to me.

9. “VCs running a playbook they didn’t write, investing money they didn’t make, chasing returns they’ll never see.” [Link] [Tweet]

The irony of the venture industry is that we give money to founders that are trying to do something in a new way while we keep running our investing businesses the same way we have for the past fifty years. And then we wonder why the returns aren’t coming.

10. “Lambs think increasing headcount is success. Lions understand eliminating work with automation is the goal.” [Link] [Tweet]

Focus. On. The. Right. Stuff.

Firehose

You can get the full stream of the things I read, it’s all on Twitter — follow me: @paulsingh. Sometimes I write stuff too. You can always find me in the Brain Trust, apply to join.

Have a great weekend!

-P

Hey,

You should have already received a calendar invitation from me for this Friday’s call — it’s at 2p ET and we’ll use Zoom for this one. (If you haven’t used Zoom before, please sign in about 10 minutes early to download/install the free software. For those of you dialing in, those details are in the calendar invite.) If you didn’t get the calendar invitation, hit reply and let me know.

More importantly, this week’s guest is Mesh Lakhani (AngelList & Twitter) — he’s a friend, an investor (in companies and funds) and is the founder of Future Investor. We’re going to have a frank discussion about anything you want. Seriously, pretty much everything is fair game and it’s only for the Brain Trust. (e.g., “Why did you invest in that fund?”, “What made you invest in XXXXX?”, “What happened to your man bun?”)

If you have specific questions, you’ll be able to ask them directly via video. Bonus points if you hit ‘reply’ on this email and send your questions to me so I can get Mesh thinking about this stuff sooner rather than later.

See you Friday!

-P

P.S. if you have smart friends / coworkers / peers that should be part of the Brain Trust, please send this to them: www.resultsjunkies.com/brain-trust

P. P.S. come hang with me in-person on the North American Tech Tour or follow my firehose on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Hey,

Thanks again for joining my free course on public speaking — I hope you found it useful — and give yourself a pat on the back: you just took a huge step towards learning how to be a more effective entrepreneur and I’m looking forward to helping you in any way I can.

There are plenty of blogs out there giving advice to entrepreneurs — as if all you need is the right growth hack to become the best entrepreneur overnight.

Being a great entrepreneur is about keeping it simple: focus, execution and iteration.

Every week, 30+ people email me for advice. I used to tell them to “just give a shit” or “just be passionate about a topic, you’ll be fine” but I now realize that advice was useless. (I’m sorry, you guys.)

Here’s the thing: they’re trying to raise more money for their company, or trying to influence more customers or just trying to get noticed at work — they’re all trying to get ahead — just like you and me.

As you know, there’s no way to become a great entrepreneur overnight. The problem doesn’t lie in you getting that one killer tip to become a better entrepreneur. The problem lies in you understanding why certain tactics and behaviors are so important.

Get ready to learn the invisible game.

That’s probably why you’re here. You’ve felt that invisible game being played when you read about other entrepreneurs getting ahead and you want to earn that same success for yourself. You want your personal brand, your career, your business and everything you make, to be more effective. Becoming a great entrepreneur is your ticket to the next level.

To gain a better sense of how to improve your own entrepreneurial skills, you need to start listening to other great entrepreneurs — but in a different way. You need to start paying attention to what great entrepreneurs do, not what they say. Don’t worry, we’re going to get into more of that later.

The invisible game isn’t something I was born knowing, it’s something that took me a long time to learn. Let’s rewind the clock back to late 2009 and let me share a bit of my story: 500 Startups didn’t exist yet and I was working for a small family office in San Antonio, TX where I was charged with managing the existing portfolio of tech investments and looking for new companies to invest in.

Every venture firm — like every successful person — has some form of uniqueness but, at their core, the most successful have two job functions: attract and hunt opportunities.

That sounds obvious, yet most get it wrong. My job as a professional was (and is) to end up with financial stakes in successful companies and projects. Frankly, that’s not so different than what I — and you — need to create a successful career.

Here I was with my first opportunity in the venture capital industry and I had to figure out how to make a name for myself. I came up with three operating rules for myself that I still use to this day. I call these the Rules of the Invisible Game:

Invisible Game Rule #1: Your personal brand isn’t what you say it is. Rather, it’s how other people perceive you.

I grew up in the DC suburbs — I didn’t have connections, contacts or experience — I was an outsider to Silicon Valley, I didn’t know anyone. So I Googled them. I dug around their LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles.

I studied everything about them: who they hung out with, what they were wearing and what they had accomplished in the past. What I noticed is that what they said and what they did seemed to be very, very different.

It turns out: who you know, what you wear and what you’ve done are certainly helpful but how you make people feel is extremely important.

Through that careful study, I also noticed something else: these people were very, very good at what they do. They understood that credibility was table stakes. Once you’re credible at something, you should focus on notability. In other words: once you’re good at something, it’s important that others view you as the expert.

So the key is to thoughtfully shape your personal brand once you understand that personal brand is how others perceive you.

Invisible Game Rule #2: Never pick a fight with an elephant head-on.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, there are two important facts to recognize: the incumbents will have more money and experience than you. They are your competition in an already-crowded market full of similar resumes, similar goals and a vested interest in staying on top — they don’t care about you. I call these the elephants and you should never attack them head-on. It’s best to flank them.

If you want to be relevant, you need to say (and do) something that matters. This will be the base that you use to dominate the market.

In my industry, attacking the elephant head-on meant that I’d need to (1) blog about venture capital and (2) spend all my time in Silicon Valley. I chose to do neither of these — I chose to flank the competition. I wrote the five most common things I saw them doing in their professional careers. Then I sat down to figure out what I should do that they weren’t already doing.

I chose to focus my efforts on spending time outside Silicon Valley and learning how to be a better public speaker. Neither of these were something that my competition wanted to do. (Seriously, when is the last time you saw a Partner at a major VC firm get on a flight to some small town in the Mid-West to meet with founders or speak publicly about something? When was the last time you listened to a VC on stage that wasn’t boring? Go ahead, I’ll wait.)

Unless you’ve got unlimited time and money, it’s best to out-skill the competition — beat them before they ever see you coming.

Invisible Game Rule #3: Never forget the psychology of the person sitting across from you.

Humans are funny but predictable: we haven’t changed much since the beginning of time — we want to get paid, made or laid.

Whether you’re hustling publicly or privately, remember that no one cares what you need. They only care about what they want. Your job is to figure out what they want and give it to them.

When I studied investors that did speak on stage, they tended to be boring, self-focused and (perhaps unwittingly) prone to using off-putting body language. These speakers gave little thought to their audiences. At times, I suspect they forgot there was an audience at all. Their missed opportunity was going to be my gain: I would shape my content and my presence to serve the listeners’ needs. Pumping up my ego didn’t need to be done on a stage.

Someone really smart once told me, “if you help other people get rich, you will too.” (I’m pretty sure his name was Hiten Shah. 🙂 Again, the key is to focus on what your audience wants — not what you need.

And with all of that in mind, let’s bring it back to the point: what you’re working on simply doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have a system for improving your skills and abilities — and that’s what I hope to share with you through everything I do.

Introducing the Results Junkies Brain Trust

Unless you’re already based in Silicon Valley, NYC or some other large tech hub, you’re facing the same challenge that I faced in the early days of my own career: finding and connecting with smart, like-minded people on a regular basis is incredibly tough — especially when they don’t live near you.

Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting (and investing in) some of the smartest people in the world. I hop on regular video calls with them each week to exchange tactical tips, learn about new things they’re testing and introduce them to other investors and founders I’ve met along the way.

Now I’m opening it up to you too.

Each week, I coordinate a video call for the Brain Trust and we all hop on together. On some weeks, I’ll bring fellow investors (or founders in my portfolio) on to the call for a no-bullshit chat. On other weeks, I’ll do live office hours to review your pitch, critique your term sheet or answer any of your other questions. I’ll even tell you the behind-the-scenes details of what I’m working on too.

I want the Brain Trust to be an exclusive group for smart people focused on growing their startups and small businesses. And I’m hopeful that you’ll join us. You can find all the details here: www.resultsjunkies.com/brain-trust

-P

P.S. While you’re waiting for your first weekly Brain Trust call, join me in-person on myNorth American Tech Tour or follow my firehose on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram andSnapchat.

Happy Saturday.

I’m just about 5 miles in the sky over someplace in Colorado at the moment and heading to DC tonight. I’ll do a quick keynote in Charleston, SC later this week, spend some time in DC and then head back to Vegas to begin hauling the Airstream over to Lincoln, NE. Busy, busy, busy.

I kicked off the first Brain Trust video call yesterday and it was a hit. We’ll keep doing this each Friday and I’ll bring on special guests from time to time. You can join the Brain Trust here: www.resultsjunkies.com/brain-trust

1. A Stanford dean on adult skills every 18-year-old should have [Link] [Tweet]

I’ve had a lot of time to think as I’ve pulled the Airstream around the country. One of those thoughts: some people (like the ones referenced in the article) grow up at 18, I’m trying to grow up at 35.

2. “Tech fatigue is a signal.” [Link] [Tweet]

Tech fatigue is real — I’ve experienced it. Sometimes all I need to do is close the laptop, get a good night’s sleep and pick it up in the morning. Other times (especially on this tech tour), I need to remind myself that the things I’ve learned and experienced may not be common knowledge in some of the cities I’m visiting. The key is to know the difference.

3. “you can never step into the same startup zeitgeist twice.” [Link] [Tweet]

At each stop of the tech tour, I sit down for 1:1 office hours with 20-30 local tech companies. Sometimes we’re talking about ideas, sometimes we’re talking about their revenue growth and other times we’re talking about their hiring plans. The hardest thing, by far, is listening to the same pitch from different founders across the country. The list of bad statements in the article read like a transcription of some of the toughest office hour slots I’ve had to date.

If I could find an economical way to pull one investor and one founder from each city I visit and have them join me in at least three other cities on the tour, I bet I could help them make even better decisions in their home towns. After all, seeing and meeting more companies outside your home town is probably the #1 way to learn.

4. “it’s crucial that you learn to invest your time, your resources, and your capital to greatest effect.” [Link] [Tweet]

This: “The right engagements are ultimately what propel your career. You can’t say ‘yes’ to everything.”

5. “development of technologies tends to follow an S-Curve: they improve slowly, then quickly, and then slowly again.” [Link] [Tweet]

Whether we’re talking about smartphones, some social platform or whatever technology you’re working on, this is worth internalizing: “The point of this excursion into tech history is that a technology often produces its best results just when it’s ready to be replaced – it’s the best it’s ever been, but it’s also the best it could ever be. There’s no room for more optimisation – the technology has run its course and it’s time for something new, and any further attempts at optimisation produce something that doesn’t make much sense.”

6. “If you listen to none of the feedback, you will learn nothing. If you listen to all of it, nothing will happen.” [Link] [Tweet]

When in doubt, seek out people that have recently experienced (and, ideally, overcome) the situation that you’re dealing with at the moment. At the rate the world’s moving forward these days, recent experience trumps vast experience.

7. “Try to avoid having too many small dollar investors.” [Link] [Tweet]

As a general rule of thumb, you should understand that there’s an inverse correlation between the size of an investor’s check and the amount of handholding they’ll need. Founders beware.

Bonus tip: never, ever, ever, ever be someone’s first investment. Trust me on this.

8. “Online audiences have never been larger or easier to reach. But making money off them is proving trickier.” [Link] [Tweet]

The goal isn’t to the gain the largest audience anymore. It’s about finding, fostering and enabling passionate niches within the larger audience. The revenue will follow.

9. “Don’t start that start-up, it won’t work, there aren’t enough customers, and the technology doesn’t work.” [Link] [Tweet]

If you’re currently in the thick of the entrepreneurial grind, you’d do well to have this list printed and hung right next to your monitor.

10. “I’ve always wanted to be in financial control of our future, so we are.”  [Link] [Tweet]

I have to admit that I envy this author’s sense of clarity. Pardon me while I go re-read it.

Firehose

You can get the full stream of the things I read, it’s all on Twitter — follow me: @paulsingh. Sometimes I write stuff too. You can always find me in the Brain Trust, apply to join.

Have a great weekend!

-P