What We’re Reading
Here are a few good articles the Collaborative Fund came across this week.
Alignment
This is a really nice primer on VC investing by Roger Ehrenberg:
I have a pretty rigid rule: if I’m not specifically passionate about the problem being addressed, then I won’t engage. The last thing I want to do is waste a founder’s time if there is no chance I’ll dig into, much less invest in, their business. And it isn’t fair to me, my existing portfolio founders or our investors if I’m spending time on stuff that doesn’t fit with my personal mission. Finally, founders deserve investors who are closely aligned with them, and are as excited about the business as they are. And if I’m not that investor, then I always counsel founders to find a better fit.
Turnover
This chart, of QBs started vs. playoff appearances, makes an important investing point about constantly shifting your strategy:
Margins
Ben Carlson makes a simple but commonly overlooked point about savings:
Salary is not the same as savings. Your net worth is more important than how much money you make. It’s amazing how many people don’t realize this simply truth. Having a high salary does not automatically make you rich; having a low salary does not automatically make you poor. All that matters is how much you save out of your salary.
Cuisine
Americans may be catching onto what most of the world already knows: Bugs are an efficient source of food:
For decades, crickets and other insects have been raised on farms as bait for anglers and feed for pet reptiles. It’s only in recent years that demand has surged for insects bred and farmed to human food standards in the United States.
There may be few hurdles preventing Americans from chowing down on cricket tacos and mealworm-flour-filled cookies, but wrestling with the feds may be easier than charming U.S. consumers. And it doesn’t matter that we’re behind the rest of the world.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that some 2 billion people regularly practice entomophagy, or eating bugs.
Repetition
This is a short but important post on systems:
We shouldn’t be proud of what we cannot do repeatedly. If we don’t know the reasoning behind why something happened or how we might be able to produce the same result again, there is a high chance that luck had a lot to do with that outcome … This is exactly why systems are important. Conscious efforts in a direction with a certain mindset helps in producing consistent results.
Entrepreneurs
A fascinating fact about startups:
According to research from the United States Small Business Administration, veterans are 45 percent more likely to be self-employed than those without active-duty military experience.
San Diego’s start-up community has grown exponentially over the past 15 years, and veterans have found homes within it, said Mark Cafferty, the chief executive of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation. The region has more than 25 incubators and accelerators for start-ups.
Have a good weekend.