|#526 MWAVC| — Investing in People
Hi,
Welcome to MWAVC, a newsletter about finance, investing, venture capital and all that jazz. My name is Ato (more about me here and here) and I try to write every single day. Most of it is stuff I find interesting that I’d like to share and hear your thoughts on. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Or just read on.
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In the last week, for whatever reason, a bunch of folks have reached out to me about where they can learn to make early investments in startups. Obv I told them MWAVC is all they need 😂. For whoever is asking, these are some things that Naval (one of the more prolific early stage investors) says about investing early. Have fun and blessed week ahead.
Naval was asked: “What do you look for in founders?” on one of his podcasts, and these were his responses. As an investor, what are you looking for in people you’re giving you hard earned money? Find his list below:
Intelligence: You’ve got to be smart and know what you’re doing on some level. You talk to people and you get a sense of do they have specific knowledge? Do they have insight? Have they thought about he problem deeply? It’s not about age but how deep their understanding is of what they’re about to do.
Energy: Because being a founder is not easy. It takes a long time and the people who succeed are those who persevere.
Integrity: If you have someone who has high intelligence, high energy but low integrity, all you’ve got is a hard working, smart crook. ethics and integrity are what you do despite the money. integrity requires longitudinal relationships
if you’re signing up to invest in someone, you’re signing up to spend the next decade of your life having them around. So make sure you genuinely like these people. You don’t consider it work to have to answer a phone call or take a meeting or spend the with them. It’s exhausting and no amount of money is worth it if they’re negative
This person has to care about what they’re putting together.
Founders who have a clear vision of some type or some vision of “true north”
Re-evaluate every opportunity on its own merits and they know these things are about timing (Talking about Sequoia that invested in WebVan and Instacart)
Sign up to my cousin Yasbo’s newsletter, ChopLife Express btw AND listen to her podcast, Savings or Current. She’s already been dropping some serious gems, including this one on time management and this one on how the economy works.
Also, Afrobility Podcast is exactly what you need to be listening to for the deep-dives into Africa’s most note-worthy companies.
Recommended Substacks: Afridigest by Emeka; African Entrepreneurship Series by Jeph; Getthebrief by Loye and Fola.
📱📱Quote of the day
The day before yesterday and yesterday are not the same as today.
Remember: “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”
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