“You don’t choose the best founders. They have to choose you.”
I forget where I read that, but it changed how I thought about the venture game.
Capital is easy to find, and the best founders are looking for more than money. They want someone who can help them hire, get distribution, and solve problems alongside them.
Here’s how I built Outlaw backwards to be a fund that founders actively want on their cap tables.
Founders want to raise from people who have built things.
I’ve shipped product. I’ve built audience. I’ve closed customers. I’ve made more mistakes than I would like to admit.
This gives me empathy and awareness of when to help, when to step back, and when to bring in others who are more-qualified than I am.
Especially at pre-seed, there are hundreds of problems to solve.
I am betting that problem solving will never go out of style, and I am positioning myself as a fractional problem solvers for the companies I work with if and when they need it.
“Venture capital is a storytelling business that occasionally returns capital.”
Media brands are great at all of the things that traditional investment firms are bad at: