Begin Again, and Again… (How it Started & How it’s Going)

In my early career, I’ve learned a handful of key lessons. Some of them I turned into an e-book I released last year so aspiring #founders, #investors, and #creators can go after their goals fearlessly.

One key #lesson I’ve meditated on recently is that it’s often not WHAT you do, but WHO you do it for.

(see one of my favorite examples below????)

Supporting new founders and investors has long been a source of inspiration during my early days as a VC :) and for as long as I can remember, it was the main reason I got up every morning to go to work and begin again.

As I embark on my next journey, I’d like to kick it off with thank you’s to the incredible founders and investors I’ve met over the years who are finding their way and inspire me to do the same everyday. Thank you!

Jai Relan ; Osagie Johnson ; Kennedy Ekezie & Duke Ekezie ; Davey Morse ; Dario Anaya ; Jailany Thiaw ; Zach Laberge ; Daniel Vataj , Paul Harshbarger , Mike Lukasevicz , and the whole TokenTag team; Wole I. & Damola Idowu at Toyz Electronics, Inc ; Adhitya Raghavan ; Richard Adjei , Felix Madutsa , and Avthar Sewrathan ?? ; Zee Schwab ; Redg Snodgrass & Ash Brown ; Hopper Hillegass & Ryan Lucken ; Isaac Ewaleifoh and the i/o fund community of pan-African professionals; Sam Baddoo ; Darrel Frater ?? ; Darren A. Small ; Uche Ndukwe ; Biyerem Okengwu ; Angelo Campus ; Noah S. ; Todd Baldwin ; Niko Fotopoulos ; Michael Jonathan Polk ; Grant T. Brazer & Susan Brazer ; Abdelwadood Daoud ; Clare Herceg ; Kiptoo Magutt ; Kidus Asfaw ; Kofi Frimpong ; Charlie Buffin , Agnes Soyode-Johnson , Kwame Morris , and the Limitless Studios team; Devin Walsh ; Federico Baradello ; Jamil Karriem & Amira Artis ; Kristen Sonday & Felicity Levey ; Shree Bose ; Andrew Koger ; Tom Sychterz ; Jason Kerkvliet ; Jason Ray ; Landon W. Campbell ; Wyatt Khosrowshahi ; Dimitris Ntaras ; Mutemwa Raphael Masheke ; Bunmi Otegbade ; Blaine Davis ; Carlo Cisco ; Dwight Green ; Derrick Raphael Esq. ; Nick van der Vink ; Danielle Strachman ; Lynn Greenberg ; Christopher Shin ; Luca Rade ; Phong Nguyen Dang ; Marty Jacobs ; Francis Igbiriki & Richard Igbiriki ; David C. Uponi ; Lexi Quirk ; Katie Tyler ; Natalie Tung ; Brooks Powell ?? ; Tommy Gibbons ; Mike Wilner ; Shriya Sekhsaria ; Kelvin Yu ; Aron Schwartz , Bethwel K. , Cathal Roberts , Sirfraz Shah , Natalie Lynch , and Chelsea Ng ; Emmanuel Udotong , Isaiah Udotong , and Luis Carchi ; Ethan B. & Sher Chaudhary ; Dan Porter & Zack Weiner ; Daouda Leonard ; Alifya Valiji ; Jesse Bloom

I’m positive I’m missing several names that should be on this list, but I hope you know what you mean to me and how incredibly grateful I am for your support and example over the years :)

I’ll always be a resource you can count on.

Equally true for Princeton Entrepreneurship Council , Keller Center , Princeton Entrepreneurship Club , Princeton Student Ventures , and members of the 美国普林斯顿大学 startup ecosystem as a whole.

In many ways, I’ve grown up because of this #community, and I’m thankful to have been a contributing force behind our collective progress.

Special thanks as well to my friends: Steven Wallace for demonstrating to me the importance of betting on yourself; my dream list advisor and regular triathlon conquerer Chuck Riesterer, CFP?, MBA for showing me how to write down my dreams and stay accountable to them; and my former health & wellness coach Patricia Beqari, NBC-HWC for helping me make the positive changes to put my holistic health on the right path.

If you were like me at the beginning of your journey through the world of startups, then you may be hesitant and a bit unsure of yourself. Surrounding yourself with inspiring friends and advisors will give you a much needed boost.

For helpful advice on taking your first steps, check out the first blog post I wrote in 2017 which officially launched me on my startup journey: "Where to start when you're building a company - The One-Pager"

See the full excerpt at the bottom of this article too.

Here’s also a helpful post I wrote on “What you can expect from your first meeting with a VC”

Finally, here’s a master link to a folder full of all the #startup and #venturecapital resources I’ve collected throughout my entire career ;) (pls reach out if you have any trouble accessing)

[As a bonus, I’m also including a 45-minute Fireside Chat from my senior year at Princeton co-created with the founding CTO of Superhuman Conrad Irwin (and boldstart ventures ) on the Chaac Ventures platform. Always a pleasure :) Timeless insights and lessons included, particularly for #engineering leads & young #students just getting started. Thanks Conrad!]

Hopefully, this article can serve as a resource you can share with fresh founders and investors in your #network who are just getting started and searching for direction.

The advice still holds true today, and I hope it inspires you to pursue your Purpose.

I’ll sign off with my favorite quote from my favorite #athlete and business leader. A man that in many ways, I’ve modeled my work ethic and overall mindset after. I thank God for the dreamers and barrier breakers all around us, doing the work silently every day, again and again…

Where to start when you’re building a company: The One-Pager

originally posted on Medium - June 13, 2017

I recently saw Tomasz Tunguz ' (a partner at Redpoint , at the time) piece on apprenticeship from his daily blog. Within it he addresses the value of apprenticeship: “Watching someone else exercise their judgement, explain and rationalize their decisions, and then [drawing] your own conclusion and inferences …is the invaluable part of being an apprentice.”

I gleaned from it a priceless secret: taking this apprenticeship approach to life, staying open and rediscovering how to be an apprentice over and over, is the key to accelerating your own development. This has never been clearer to me more than when I met Luke Armour of Chaac Ventures.

First some background:

On March 29, 2017, I attended a start-up talk hosted by Luke, an alumnus of my school, Princeton University (Luke was class of 2013), and the founder and managing director of Chaac Ventures, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm that I would later learn is focused on investing in Princeton University’s expanding tech ecosystem.

I was invited by a close friend — more like a brother to me at this point — who on occasion would drop by Princeton to catch-up and offer some cryptic wisdom that would only reveal itself as true at a later date (I love this kind of stuff!).

This time around, he had called to invite me to this start-up talk at Princeton’s Entrepreneurship Hub by Luke, a friend and business associate of his who he had mentioned to me in passing during our earlier conversations. Recognizing the concealed wisdom behind his invitation, I rushed to the E-Hub to catch as much of Luke’s talk as possible before my writing seminar began later that night.

I came for the opportunity but stayed for the incredible insights — missing my writing seminar in the process (shhh…don’t let my professor know). I arrived just in time to watch Luke introduce himself and his colleague Kristen Sonday, the founder of one of Chaac Venture’s portfolio companies Paladin: a start-up that provides #lawyers a simple way to find cases they are passionate about.

Kristen walked the room through Paladin’s history and her journey as a start-up founder, revealing deep insights from her most difficult challenges therein. Luke mediated the conversation and provided an overview of his work at Chaac Ventures, its beginnings, and his dedication to the goals of not just his portfolio companies but also to the budding entrepreneurs on Princeton’s campus (that’s me!).

To provide some context, at this point in my life I was — and still am! — infatuated by entrepreneurship and capital allocation; my reasons for which amounted to a natural interest in the craft and the freedom and control of one’s destiny that it affords individuals. So, in short, this talk was to me like gold or “winning” is to Donald Trump.

After the talk ended, I worked up the courage to introduce myself to Luke. It might seem like a no-brainer but from my perspective as a freshman college student, it was like I was Bud Fox in?Wall Street (1987) about to step into his one and only chance to impress Gordon Gecko, first looking into the mirror and saying to himself, “Well, life all comes down to a few moments, this is one of them.”

Luckily for me, Luke was a lot friendlier and understanding than Gecko. We chatted for a bit — reminiscing about our Princeton experience — exchanged contact info, and said our goodbyes.

Fast forward to the following week, and a grand idea came to me. It just so happened that earlier in the school year I had become a founding member of a new organization on Princeton’s campus named Princeton Empower, which devoted itself to the prudent proliferation of #financial literacy to communities that need it the most.

After witnessing the early success of our framework in educating students about #personal finance on campus, I realized that our #content could have the potential to transform communities and economic outcomes elsewhere, but we needed help turning our current operation into an impactful start-up as seasoned as Paladin. I saw the potential for a collaboration between Chaac Ventures and Princeton Empower to accomplish just this and decided to email Luke about it — believing the worse that could happen was that he simply said “no.”

To my surprise, Luke responded that same day requesting that we set a time to talk in late April.?What luck!?I thought.

On April 26, 2017, Luke and I connected for our first phone call. I initially thought that I would have to do plenty of the talking to keep Luke interested, but all I needed was to be eager to learn and open to advice. Luke and I both expressed our enthusiasm to work together and he instructed me to build a “one-pager” summarizing Princeton Empower, our impact, and what we needed to accomplish our goals.?Okay, I thought,?simple enough. Only, this was the first time I had ever heard of a “one-pager.” Risking emphasizing my inexperience, I decided to just ask: “What is a #one-pager and how do I make a good one?”

It turned out that Luke appreciated the question. He wasted no time walking me through a basic outline:

1)?Start with a bold one or two-sentence summary statement about what your organization is and what you do.

2)?Describe the problem and existing solutions:?Why, what, and how did this problem come to be. What is out there already addressing this problem.

3)?Explain your solution:?Describe your solution(s). What are your competitors missing or not addressing that your organization considers and addresses?

4)?Characterize the individuals on your team:?Who are the creators of your solution (i.e. you and your team) and what makes you guys the best combination to solve this problem? Include bios if space allows.

5)?Lay out the necessary pieces you need to bring in to realize your solution:?Do you need advisors, engineers, certain resources, etc. or are you, your co-founders, and your team all that’s necessary?

6)?What is your game plan/strategy:?if all you have is a concept then describe it as best you can. If you can provide a technical explanation, then provide one. Ask yourself, what are you building and what is your strategy for next steps?

7)?List your “asks:”?this is your chance to ask them questions you need answered or make specific requests. Don’t be afraid to ask for additional resources or introductions with pivotal players if that’s what you need. Let them know the areas where you need help. If you have no “asks” then you can tell them that all you need is their patience and time for you and your team to execute your game plan.

Not only did Luke agree to take a look at my Empower “one-pager,” but he extended the courtesy to “one-pagers” for ideas I came up with going forward. Wow.

I’d like to pass on this maxim I discovered from this entire experience: place yourself in situations where great success is plausible — take advantage of opportunities that present themselves — and #serendipity will handle the rest.

Building a one-pager was the first step in my long journey of learning how to be an #entrepreneur and #venture capitalist. I’m looking forward to where this journey will take me.

Thank you?to Osagie Johnson for inviting me to Princeton’s E-Hub on that almost uneventful Wednesday night in March (2017), and to Luke Armour for his advice, and also to Luke and Kristen Sonday from Paladin for coming to speak to us about your companies!

Learn more about Chaac Ventures and the amazing people behind it here:?https://chaacventures.com.

You can read Tomasz Tunguz’s piece on apprenticeship at this link:?https://tomtunguz.com/apprenticeship/.