**Scroll Down**
Internet Basics
Online CommoditiesConsumer and Creator
1. Creator = Consumer2. The Active Consumer3. โCreator-GTMโ3.A. Where the Viral Things Are4. The Anonymous Economy5. Pre-founder: People-focused investingContent is King -- Bill Gates, 1997
Things To Do.
Work to Be DoneStatements; No Missionโฌย Creator Financing
Untraditional TalentVillains/Heroes, Love/TechnologyCreator Extras
Content is Eating the WorldA Spectrum of InfluenceInfluencing InfluencersInvestment
Total Content Market (TCM)/Content TAM (C-TAM)Revisiting Community InvestingRethinking Consumer LTVโOrganicโ = unpaid?Introducing: On-Page Collaboration, LiveWriting, anti-Press PublishVC Managers: Finding your styleWomenโs Consumer (2022)The โonlineโ buttonTranslation
โGenZโPersonal Journal
An intro to Personal JournalUnfortunately How to Build a FundI Donโt Want to Be YouAdvice for a Y1/Y2 woman in VCAdvice for a Y3 woman in VC My love letter to JournalistsWomen and Wikipedia ManifestoDating in Your IndustryAlcohol and VCInvest in the Opposition Not On Your SideCreator vs. Kinda โcreatorโForced Content.โPedigreeโโLeversโโCleanupโโExamplesโMe & PaulVery Specific AdviceWhy I dropped outYoung PeopleHow to be JealousContent vs. JournalismTo Be Freeยฉ EM 2024
Pre-founder: People-focused businesses
Good talent is good talent. Getting back to basics: investing in talent.
There are two things you canโt deny:
- Entrepreneurial founders (not every founder) work on multiple businesses at the same time.
- Distribution matters.
The stage before pre-seed? Pre-idea? Do you want some money?
What is โpre-founderโ?
Pre-founder or PreFounder, depending on however the Pre-/Preseed debate pans out, has been commonly defined as the stage before pre-seed. But to me:
Pre-Founder is a type of venture investment into a current operator for founder potential foreseen by the investor and acknowledged by the operator themselves.
Who is a Pre-Founder?
Pre-Founders can be determined in the following positions:
Venture Studio. The scouted, and then hired, CEO.
Incubators. Specifically the ones that decide to not continue with their entered idea.
In-house Recruiting. Candidates brought together for a specific role. Havenโt left their current job, but were open enough to take the call.
Zeal-type of recruits. Outsourced equity for
Who does Pre-Founder?
The Pre-Founder track can be found in many Founder-adjacent roles to the investor.
Pre-Founder can be found by both:
The Investor. Meeting with very early founders.
Head of Talent. Recruiting for portfolio companies.
Staging
My first few months full-time in VC happened around a VC bubble. As you can imagine, I didnโt care too much about it being that I was starting off at an emerging, pre-seed/seed/A-ish kind of firm. As time went on and I befriended some other investors that worked specifically at pre-seed-to-series-A, I found myself familiar to stage-specific, and most importantly price-specific funds. It always starts off with the price amount preferred.
We like to be one of the first (30) checks in.
Does not equate to:
We like to lead or semi-lead the absolute first round.
And at first, I thought this was all standardized: โEarlyโฆ.โ โEarliest stagesโ, etc.
Had to mean whatever that first round isโฆ because they want to work with that founder. Because theyโre โworth the price.โ
But, what Iโve come to find out is that stages are complete malarkey.
Define โtalentโ
talent: An individual person with expertise, and maybe network, in an industry.
Talent: A โstar qualityโ, independently-thinking individual. An โit-factorโ person with creativity and skill in a very specific space.
Why I care
In the startup ecosystem, โtalentโ has been broken up into two buckets: technical and nontechnical talent. Although there seems to be a never-ending shortage of technical talent, thereโs no debate that almost half of venture dollars spent go to GTM and ads - and someone has to run that part.
My main petition is that there might be a shortage of GTM hires with enough product and SV context to really rip it.
Talent issues
There are also two main issues to talent, regardless of startup or not: recruitment and retention. For VC funds, in particular, retention in particular has been entirely difficult.
Fit
FounderโMarket Fit: Founder has experienced the problem, has potential to sell accurately to potential ProductโMarket Fit: A product that solves a problem so well it generates demand within a market.
FounderโCustomer Fit: Built in distribution to potential customers. This can be someone with a lot of followers or someone with a niche dentistry blog. Or a previous sales operator with a rolodex of potential customers. For this blog, Iโm mostly thinking about a founder with online influence.
- Pre-founder: People-focused businesses
- What is โpre-founderโ?
- Who is a Pre-Founder?
- Who does Pre-Founder?
- Staging
- Define โtalentโ
- Why I care
- Talent issues