Today marks the end of my ninety-fifth week of working from home (mostly). Here are my takeaways from week ninety-five:

• Atlanta – I had great conversations with various people about new initiatives happening in Atlanta around start-ups and entrepreneurship. The city is on an upward trajectory. I’m excited to be part of it and can’t wait to see where Atlanta is in ten years. I foresee Atlanta as being the internationally recognized capital of the Southeast and known for inclusive entrepreneurship.
• Beginner’s mindset – Another investor I respect shared this term with me a few months ago. It’s hard to disregard what you know and have experienced when looking at opportunities, but since then I’ve been more aware of this mindset and more intentional about looking at things from a fresh perspective. Talking with credible people this week about things I’m researching was a good way to induce a beginner’s mindset.
• Energizing chats – I had a few great chats this week. Some personal, some business, some a mix of both. They were helpful and energizing. It’s always enjoyable to connect with good people.

Week ninety-five was a high-activity week. I got a lot done—but still have a lot to do next week.

Founders looking for capital will likely talk to a lot of investors and hear no repeatedly before they hear yes. It’s a frustrating process. Today I was talking with a founder friend about finding the right investor. We discussed the importance of fit.

Founders have an objective they’re trying to achieve. They need capital, start-up knowledge, and relationships to execute and turn their vision into reality. The investors that can help them achieve this objective are the best fit. Founders are (or should be) evaluating investors for fit, but what they often don’t realize is that this is happening on the other side of the table too.

Investors, like founders, have objectives. They’re looking for opportunities that are the best fit with their objectives. Investors’ objectives vary. They probably include potential financial return, but they may also include other variables. For instance, an investor may want to fund a start-up with a specific approach to solving a problem. Or invest in certain types of solutions (e.g., software) and not others. Or give back to the community as well as make money (do good while doing well). Whatever their objectives are will play into their decision-making process. This means you could be a great founder with a great idea, but the opportunity might not be a fit with a given investor’s objectives.

Good relationships are mutually beneficial. Founders should be mindful of this when evaluating investors (or any partner for that matter). Clearly articulate what your objectives are—but understand the objectives of the other party too. The goal is to find fit: alignment of the objectives of both parties, even if they differ. When there’s a fit, the relationship will be mutually beneficial.

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In the early days of a company, the team is small. One person leaving the company can be a big blow to the team. To an early founder not anticipating the departure, it’s frustrating. Usually, team members opt to leave when things aren’t going well, so the departure combined with challenges in the business can feel like a double whammy and cause founders to question themselves as leaders.

Departures happen at start-ups. The first leaver likely won’t be the last. You want to do all you can to build a great environment and have everyone aligned on the mission, but however hard you try, people will leave. It’s a setback—but also an opportunity to get candid feedback on the business, how leaders are perceived, and the mood of the rest of the team.

I’m a big fan of doing exit interviews when team members choose to depart. Along with thanking them for their service and letting them know they’re always welcome to come back (if they were a good team member), it’s important to ask them for candid feedback. When someone is departing, they’ll usually give more direct feedback because they don’t have anything to lose.

Listening to feedback from someone leaving a hole in your team is hard to do. But it’s super important to look past how you feel about the situation and the extra workload caused by the departure. Listen to understand the why behind the person’s decision to depart, what’s going well, and what can be improved. You may not agree with everything they say, but this opportunity to learn and improve in various areas doesn’t come often. It often leads to valuable golden nuggets.

If you’re an early founder and a team member exits, don’t dwell on the fact that they quit. Instead, focus on what you can learn from the situation to minimize the chances of it happening again and to make your business better.

I spent time talking with a founder friend and with family this weekend about the current labor market for front-line workers. I already knew about businesses having to reduce their hours of operation or capacity due to labor issues. I’ve read about the Great Resignation. But I was still surprised when I listened to firsthand accounts from the customer’s perspective this weekend. It’s anecdotal evidence, but it still got me thinking. I was talking to unrelated parties in different states, yet they were having similar experiences.

I really want to understand this phenomenon better. I’ll be spending some time over the next few weeks learning more from people on the front lines of this issue. My gut tells me that something bigger is happening here that we haven’t fully grasped.  

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I wanted to take today to celebrate the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His contributions to society were foundational in moving our country closer to equality for all.

Hope everyone had a great MLK Day!

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I’ve shared my views on the entrepreneurial opportunity to take laggard industries from physical to digital. I’ve been thinking more about what the ideal company will look like in the future in laggard industries and what the result of that will be. A few thoughts:

• Automation - Manual and inefficient processes are common in old-school industries. The result can be inconsistent and slow execution of critical tasks, which leads to a poor customer experience. Automation will be a big part of the ideal company in these industries. Efficiency, timeliness, and visibility of execution will not only improve the customer experience but also reduce costs.
• Centralized data - Manual processes and a lack of systems mean that data is often unavailable to team members and leadership. Decisions are made with subjective or anecdotal evidence. Digitization will allow ideal companies to store data centrally and use it to improve decision-making.

These are just two of many ways digitization can improve laggard (and other) industries. Overall, I believe digitization will allow companies to create more value for customers and reduce costs.

My parents raised me with a certain set of values and morals, which I stuck to. As an early founder, I always assumed others operated similarly. But as my entrepreneurial journey progressed, I learned that wasn’t always the case.

A few of our customers took advantage of us. We sold automotive parts to consumers and had customer-friendly policies around returns and other service situations. They were great for most of our customers, but they also attracted fraudsters. We got hit with a rash of fraudulent transactions in the early days. Caught off guard, we didn’t know what to do to fight them. In the end, they cost us a significant amount of money I didn’t have. We learned we had to be more aware of what was going on with our orders. We implemented systems and processes to identify suspicious orders. I also had our team take an aggressive stance vis-à-vis orders that we deemed fraudulent after they were shipped. Fraudulent transactions dropped sharply, to the point we rarely saw them. Fraudsters knew we’d fight back and weren’t an easy target.

And a supplier walked all over us. This company was orders of magnitude larger than my company and our main supplier at the time. Knowing this, they used their scale to push us around. They’d change our payment terms on the fly, which affected our cash flow. They’d change our pricing on a whim, which made us less competitive and reduced our revenue. They’d limit our ability to sell certain products, too. All these moves were made to optimize the relationship for the supplier at my company’s expense. Once I realized this company was looking out for itself—and only itself—I changed our strategy. I instructed our team to take an aggressive stance with them. We pushed back strongly on one-sided changes and even cut them off as a supplier. That company began to reverse their decisions and operate with more of a partnership mentality. They learned we weren’t a customer they could push around.

From these situations and others, I learned how important it is for a founder to be situationally aware. You can’t count on everyone to be honest and fair all the time. Your business, your people, and your money are on the line. You have to pay attention. You must understand when you’re in a situation where bad actors could prey on you or parties you’re involved with could do harm if given the opportunity. And you have to figure out how to protect yourself.

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Today marks the end of my ninety-fourth week of working from home (mostly). Here are my takeaways from week ninety-four:

• More current learning – Learning new things is important to me. And reading books is one of my favorite ways to learn. One problem: the pace of change in the world is accelerating, and books aren’t always up-to-date. This week I spent time thinking about other ways I can learn more current information efficiently.
• Habits – I implemented some new habits this week. Some went well, while others will take more work. I’m confident they’re the right habits, but it will take time for them to become second nature.

Week ninety-four was productive and steady. Looking forward to keeping up the momentum next week.

I listened to an investor talk about an investment he made in an early-stage company. Smart founder, painful problem, growing market. Even so, the investor is concerned about the investment. The founder wants to grow the business but isn’t growing the team. He’s personally in the middle of everything, so nothing gets completed and growth isn’t what it should be.

It takes a team to build a big company. As a founder, it’s hard to let go. There’s always the feeling that no one can do it as well as you. I experienced this, as did several of my founder friends. In the end, we all had the same experience. When we found the right people and empowered them (i.e., got out of their way!), they did a better job than we could have ever done. We wish we had done it much earlier in our journey.

If you’re a founder aiming to build something big, remember: teamwork is dream work.

Finding a co-founder can be a challenge. Especially for non-technical founders. I was chatting with one today who asked about my early founder experience evaluating people who might become cofounders or high-level team members.

There are lots of examples of teams with high-caliber individuals who can’t make it work as a team. For this reason and others, I opted to evaluate two potential leaders by working with them before extending full-time offers.

There was no shortage of problems that needed to be solved, so I created two projects of short duration—a few weeks to a month—and assigned each of them to a project, paying them as a consultant to solve it. I was able to gauge their working styles, and they were able to gauge mine. The projects were a success, and I knew I could work with each of them individually.

The next thing I needed to figure out was if we could all work together as a team. I created another short-term project for the three of us to collaborate on. I tried to make sure each person contributed strategically and tactically to the project. It turned out that we worked well together, and I was ready to add them to the team full-time.

With this approach, I was able to evaluate these two people individually and then as part of a team with me. It gave me confidence not only in their individual abilities but also in our chemistry. In the end, this team helped scale the company to eight-figure revenue.

This approach won’t work for all founders, but it worked for me.

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