If I had to distill the work of investing down to one thing, I’d say it’s the craft of building and sustaining relationships. This is my favorite part personally, and something I enjoy studying quite carefully. Without a doubt, the relationships I’ve forged over the course of my relatively short career are the reason I’m here today. Lately, I’ve been reflecting and wondering… how did those relationships even happen?
I don’t think you can speedrun closeness. Like many other naive and angsty teenagers, I used to think small talk was silly and intimacy could be expedited by simply asking deeper questions. I don’t believe this anymore. The most valuable relationships take time simply because trust takes time. Sure, you can feel superficially close to someone by asking and answering intense questions, but that isn’t a relationship — it’s just an experience. “Intimacy runoff” is what I call it when a (usually young) person craves closeness/feeling seen but isn’t looking for it in the right places, so they do things like ask weirdly deep questions of strangers or confuse their ambition for attraction.
The bedrock of relationships is consistency and time. Showing up in the same place as someone else again and again will put in this time, and that’s why it’s easiest to become friends with either coworkers or people your age who naturally have a similar amount of free time to devote to being with people. How deep those friendships go is usually a function of how forthcoming each person is about who they are and what they think/feel, as well as the degree to which they exhibit care for the other. This is my main learning from the last few years: consistency, care, and openness are all you can do — the rest of a relationship’s fate is out of your hands. There’s a beauty to that; not pressuring the other person to be something they’re not or setting each other in stone. Relationships require steady softness! What more they need I’ll learn in time.
Links
Seeing the court clearly (essay)
I’ve been watching too much Wimbledon. On tennis and founder qualities.The evaporative cooling effect by Hang (essay)
Fascinating examination of social dynamics in groups.
Grow the puzzle around you by Jessica Livingston (essay)
"I was almost uncannily well suited for the kind of work it took to make YC successful. But the things that made me well-suited for it were so far from the qualities most people associate with startup founders. I'll list them so you can see for yourself. I was the social radar, a good event planner, maternal, empathetic, a straight shooter, and not driven by money or fame. Think how far that is from the profile of the typical startup founder you read about in the press. Maternal? Since when was that an important quality in a startup founder? Let alone the founder of an investment firm. And yet it was critical to making YC what it is.”The Right Kind of Stubborn by Paul Graham (essay)
"When you point out a problem to them, they not only listen, but listen with an almost predatory intensity. Is there a hole in the bottom of their boat? Probably not, but if there is, they want to know about it.”Are you a jerk or a liar by Cate Hall (essay)
On truth-seeking vs. social cohesion (goes hand in hand with PG’s essay above).
A Letter a Day by Kevin Gee (archive)
Great archive of letters and transcripts from some of the best business/tech/investing leaders and thinkers.
Startup Finance for Founders by Peter Reinhardt (essays)
Really useful set of guides on under-discussed areas of business building.Karl Ove Knausgaard on the Genius of Ingmar Bergman (essay)
A careful study of a creative genius’s process!
On the Happy Life by Seneca (book)
"Accordingly, the happy life is the one that is in harmony with its own nature, and the only way it can be achieved is if, first, the mind is sound and constantly in possession of its sanity, and secondly, if it is brave and vigorous, and, in addition, capable of the noblest endurance, adopting to every new situation, attentive to the body and to all that affect it, but not in an anxious way, and, finally, if it concerns itself with all the things that enhance life, without showing undue respect for any one of them, taking advantage of Fortune's gifts, but not becoming their slave."Indie interview with Michael Dempsey (video)
All of the Indie interviews are great but this one with Michael is my favorite.
14 Minutes by Dominic Fike (album)
I’m fascinated by this burgeoning genre of music (I call it bug music). It’s Brockhampton/Dijon/Remi Wolf/Jai Paul/Bricknasty adjacent but more pop-y.Absolutely by Dijon (album)
The more soulful/less mastered version of Dominic Fike, while also completely different in every way… watching them make the music live feels deeply moving.
Move Like You Want by Ben Howard (song)
One of the best feel-good songs I know of.
Parting thought
If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.
Sometimes I read essays and articles that ramble on for pages, trying to prove their words' worth or make it to some arbitrary character count. Other times, I find pieces that use brevity in strength, making use and power of every word on the page. That's what I felt this piece did. Every sentence reached out to me, in some way or another - even the links and quote. Delightful read, thank you.