misunderstood

September 2024

I’m often asked how a film major like myself ended up in venture capital, and honestly I don’t think I’ll ever have a good answer to that question. There are through lines I could pull out for you, yes, but the only part that matters to me is that the work of the job has always felt right as I do it, and I think that fluidity is a feeling worth following.

Watching influencers and applying to college seems to have programmed everyone my age with the belief that everything we do needs to be narratable as we’re doing it. What I found though is that making myself understandable all the time diluted the joy that lies instead in specificity — in concisely crafting a life that only needs to make sense to me.

Allowing yourself to be misunderstood teaches you who values you for your personhood alone and how much you actually need from other people to feel sufficiently validated and socially satisfied. Being neither understood nor wanted is pure freedom, but obviously we social creatures don’t want that. I’m where I am today because the strength of the handful of friendships I found with strange people similar to me who somehow also wound up here was all I needed to feel plenty rooted.

I like the world of early-stage startups and VC because here, I am a strange fish in a small pond. In my book, this is a good way to live. The main reason I write is to find answers to the question of how to live well; I study the approaches of others and come to the page to understand how their way works and why. Those who avoid having to explain their lives seem remarkably more happy that those who develop a taste for mass validation of their personhood. Ego is usually what moves a person to make themselves legible, but few enjoy living with the heightened expectations legibility attracts from others. However, this lesson falls firmly in the bucket of things everyone seems to have to learn the hard way — fame is such a fascinating thing.

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Links

• Foxes and Hedgehogs by Altos Ventures (essay)
  Similar to how I think about the difference between moths vs. butterflies :) Alex Komoroske’s Sarumans vs. Radagasts draws a similar distinction around working styles.

• Resignation Letter by Jerry Neumann (essay)

  Compelling story of someone doing venture capital similar to how the category was originally conceived (taking on tons of risk like the entrepreneurs he backed).

• The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite by Tanner Greer (essay)
  A cynical but accurate read of the type of intellectualism Silicon Valley celebrates.

• Ray Dalio’s “Shapeshifters” (essay)
  One of the best definitions I’ve found of the qualities that make for an excellent venture entrepreneur. I also read The Fund (about Bridgewater culture) and The Money Trap (about Softbank culture) and honestly can’t really recommend either.

• Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey (book)
  This book is extremely satisfying for self-improvement junkies who care more about changing their self beliefs as opposed to maximizing productivity. Roughly half the book is about how to restore corroding company cultures, while the other half contains lots of diagnostic frameworks for individual-level change.

• Culture Study on the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders by Anne Helen Peterson (essay)
  I really enjoy astute analyses of abnormal microcultures, especially when they pay close attention to how the little world works/pushes people to extremes and why. Jia Tolentino’s recent piece on content created for iPad kids fits this bill as well.

• William Gedney’s photography of SF in the 1960s (archive)
  Perfect photo accompaniment to Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

• Love in the Afternoon by Eric Rohmer (film)

  Gorgeous film that provides a fascinating peek into married man interiority.

• Kaytranada on Broken Record with Rick Rubin (podcast)
  I’m a sucker for creatives honestly discussing their process. Andre 3000’s episode is also excellent, as is Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit and David Chang’s The Unified Theory of Deliciousness for more on this topic.

• Moves by Suki Waterhouse (song)
  Girl noise. See also: Fade Into You by Mazzy Star and Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls

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Parting thought

It is an act of cowardice to seek from (or to wish to give) the people we love any other consolation than that which works of art give us. These help us through the mere fact that they exist. To love and to be loved only serves mutually to render this existence more concrete, more constantly present to the mind.

— “Gravity and Grace” by Simone Weil