What is the relationship between Venture Capital and Finding Love?

Our ancestors would probably be pretty jealous if they knew what life today was like.

Hi guys,

Hope you are doing well. I’m okay, Alhamdulillah.

While I expected my week to be busy, I was hoping for a much calmer weekend. Going by Friday night and all of yesterday, I did not get it. However, for only the second time this year, I got a chance to play football this morning and am now sore all over.

In the iconic words of Scotty P from We're The Millers, ‘no ragrets’.

Well, there were three key takeaways from my two-ish hours on the pitch today.

1. I am terribly unfit. 😂😂

   In all honestly, this should not be news. It appears my stomuk took Elsa's advice to ‘Let it goooo’ paraps a little too literally. But when you’re gasping for breath like a pregnant woman after a game and a friend says, ‘Hameed, are you okay?’, you know that one iyaf do. 😂😂

2. Football, like everything else, is cultural.

   With most of my playing experience (if you called playing once in a while with fellow amateurs experience) in Lagos, it is normal to hear things like ‘i1’ and ‘i2’ as captains choose players before a game. To my teammates today, this would likely be a strange phenomenon. There was no choosing process, and people just walked to a half of the field and played. If you walked onto the field and saw less people in half A, you played for Team A and vice versa. It was a bit strange how often we switched players and teams just because some one (or some people) took a break and then returned to another side.

   Back to the cultural point. I remember at some point shouting ‘file!’ as I wanted a teammate to leave the ball for me. Of course, he had no clue what ‘file’ meant. 😂

   Football, like everything else, is cultural. Your expectations and world view are purely shaped on the experiences you have had. As these experiences evolve, your world view will slowly begin to change as well.

3. Success is addictive

   The format of our game was quite different. We played for about 15/20 minutes, took a 5 minutes breather and then played another set. We did this 5 or 6 times, playing for about 2 hours in total. After about an hour of playing, I was completely fagged out and ready to go home. 😆

   But I couldn't bring myself to leave.

   Why?

   By some weird combination of wanting to enjoy the game I had missed, having good teammates and sheer luck, I was scoring in every set. So even though I was completely spent, I would somehow score again and say to myself, ‘Hmmn this is fun, let me do one more set.’ And so I ended up staying about 2 hours in total. 😂

   Success is addictive. Getting a ‘high’ off anything is addictive. This is why athletes struggle to retire, often playing till no one wants them anymore. It is why Professors who are much too old to be in a classroom stay on and teach. It is why anybody that cheats on their SO once will likely do it again.

   If something gives you a much-craved high, it is very difficult to stop when the time is right. But then one can argue that there should be no need to stop if you enjoy what you do. 🤔

   Ah well.

—————

On Friday night (yes I’m a dead guy with nothing better to do on a Friday night 😂), I attended a 3-hour workshop on Venture Capital, Business Angels & Startups (you should check it out!) and learnt so so much.

I had been listening and taking notes when about an hour in, the facilitator said,

‘You know, a lot of the advice relevant to the VC and startup world is so relevant to marriage. I even think VCs and startups spend more time together than the average married couple in the US. 😂’

** side note: According to Pitchbook, the average VC fund has a lifespan of 8 to 12 years. Meanwhile, the average length of a marriage in the US is 8.2 years. Fascinating.

Haha I thought he was kidding, so I decided to note everything he said that I thought was possibly relevant to marriage.

It turns out there were a lot of things.

The rest of the newsletter is fairly scattered, I hope you derive some value anyway.

Never a better time

‘It has never been easier to start a company, but it has never been harder to make a return.’ - Prof. Henning Piezunka

This is 100% true. The world is flowing right now with excess capital. Both institutional investors and the rising middle class are actively looking for opportunites to invest money.

** side note: I have deliberately decided not to shade Tradera or Racksterli people today.

Stock prices and startup valuations are through the roof because there is huge amount of capital to be spent, especially in advanced economies. Also, the requirements to create a startup are much easier than before. You can literally buy a website domain name, set up a template website, and get customers from social media advertisement all in one day!

On the other hand, it has never been harder to make a return. For almost every ‘new’ idea you have, there are 20 people on Obasanjo’s internet doing it already. Markets are becoming more and more fragmented. Thanks to the internet, information flows freely so it's more difficult to have ‘secrets’ or get a sustainable competitive advantage on any new product. If you have a new e-commerce site, why should they switch from Amazon? Oh you write a newsletter? Well they read enough newsletters already!

** side note: plis edakun don’t stop o, continue reading (and sharing) my newsletter 😭

So what does any of this have to do with relationships?

Well, it has never been easier to start a relationship.

We have Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and whatever else. We can find people, have conversations and interact at an easier scale than ever before. 100 years ago, two people planning to get together would probably have written letters by post once in two weeks.

Now not only are we spoilt for choice, we are spoilt for access. We can talk all day and do video calls. All Tinder people need to do is ‘swipe right’ - amazing. Our ancestors would probably be pretty jealous if they knew what life today was like. 😂

But it has also never been more difficult to build a successful relationship/marriage (‘make a return’). All of these apps that help us ‘communicate’ also take away the vital time a relationship needs. Since we are spoilt for choice, why stress on this one when I can be talking to someone ‘better’ on Facebook in an hour?

We also have 2 billion social media relationships to compare our own too, and suddenly ours just doesn’t seem so good anymore. Marriages and Relationships are shorter and less fulfilling.

‘It has never been easier to start a relationship, but it has never been harder to make a return.’

Specialization and choosing a stage

There’s something every VC needs to do early on. They need to decide which stages and sectors to invest in.

First, sector. Should they invest in every kind of business or businesses in only a particular vertical? An example of a VC that invests across multiple sectors is Andreessen Horowitz. Meanwhile, some VCs might have experience in a particular industry, and thus determine to focus their investments on that sector. For example, Volvo Cars Tech Fund mostly invests in startups in the mobility industry.

Got it?

Okay.

Then, stage. Should the VC invest in companies at all stages of their lifecycle or only at a particular stage? Some VCs don’t care how large a company already is. If there is value, they would gladly invest whether it is seed stage (a very new company) or Series D (a company that has previously received a lot of funding and grown a lot).

Meanwhile, some other VCs decide to specialize e.g. Khosla Ventures that only invests in early stage companies.

If we were to plot a 2x2 matrix of VCs by sectors and stages, it would look something like this.

So what on earth does this have to do with relationships?

Well, before entering a relationship, you need to find a partner. And much like the VCs that need to categorize by stage and specialty, you probably need to do the same.

Let us take an example of four fictional people - Oghena, Omolabake, Khad, and Ade who are looking for a significant other.

For Oghena, he doesn’t care about stage - he can be with anyone at any stage of their life. For sector again, he doesn’t care. He has no biases to any field. Oghena will go to the top-right section.

For Omolabake, she is very clear that she wants to marry a Tech Bro and cash out 😂, but she doesn’t care what stage of life he is at. Student? CEO? 25? 35? It doesn’t matter too much, so far he’s a Tech Bro.

Ade’s case is quite different. He frankly doesn’t have any preferences what sector his WCW wants to specialize in, but she must be a student. Since he is not ready to marry for a few more years, it would be unwise to follow someone that has graduated school, is advancing in their career, and might be in a rush.

And for Khad, she is exactly what Ade does not want. She needs someone at a particular stage - working and earning good money. Also, she doesn’t think she would gel well with anybody that does not have an Engineering background.

If we were to superimpose the ‘spec’ of these four (fictional? 😏) people on our previous exhibit, we would have something like this.

I don’t know why this image makes me happy. 😂😂

After taking you on a merry go round (and spending my whole day in front of the computer), I think it is fair to say the facilitator was right, and there is quite a bit of overlap between Venture Capital and marriage.

In a normal newsletter, I would have a clear takeaway or call to action. Today, there is no such thing. Take of today’s newsletter what you may, and if your answer is that I need more interesting things to do on a weekend, you would be absolutely correct. 😂

If you made it this far, thank you!

Have a great week ahead. ✨

Hameed

** Author's note (sorry no jara today):

I recently got feedback that some of my newsletters are too long. I personally have preferred writing longer ones to share as much value as possible. However, making them shorter will save me a lot of time and stress!

Please let me know if you think they should be shorter or longer or are just right. I have created a very short survey (1 question, takes 5 seconds!) for this here.

Also, I'm currently looking for an app or website that makes it easier to draw/make illustrations. Please let me know your suggestions by email or in the comment section if you prefer.

Merci beaucoup! :)