Silver linings

This has been, without question, one of the oddest and scariest times of my life on this planet. It feels more jarring than a single trauma, as its dynamic and uncertain nature makes it challenging to get my mind around and deal with. Also, the necessary protective measure for reducing the effectiveness of the virus’s spread, social distancing, works against the basic desire to be with, hug and empathize with those experiencing a similar fate. But giving into this primal need is not what I, my family or my community needs for our survival and getting past the current crisis. So living apart from so much of my family, my dear friends, and my founders and their businesses has forced physical, psychological and workflow adjustments that I couldn’t have imagined even four short weeks ago. But let me say, notwithstanding the weirdness and the changed habits, I have experienced some silver linings to the current crisis that makes me hopeful that when a new day is upon us, that we can live better, smarter and with greater appreciation than we did prior to the shock of the coronavirus pandemic.

Time is more precious. Funnily enough, even as we have less “structure” in our days, the time spent is perhaps used even more wisely because of the challenges people — all people — are dealing with. I have never been closer to my founders than I am right now, even as they are confronting some incredibly hard decisions, many of which directly relate to survival. But you know what? I am laser focused on just surfacing mission critical, high impact issues, and am even more conscious of how incredibly valuable their time is. While I’ve always sought to apply this standard, I find myself being even more disciplined in the current environment. Also, I let them take the lead. What do they need? To vent? To commiserate? To share anguish? To be heard? Whatever it is, whatever they’re dealing with is a hell of a lot more important than what I’m dealing with, so I let them drive the bus.

Video is even more powerful than I could have imagined. I’ve done zillions of Zoom meetings for years. And I’ve always felt them to be ok, but no substitute for in-person meetings. But something has happened to me as video chat has become the only channel through which I can speak with my parents, my extended family, my closest friends, my partners, my founders and new potential founders. I’ve gotten used to it and find myself attending to nonverbal cues much in the way that I do when I’m meeting someone in person. With the exception of spotty bandwidth at times, I have found it a surprisingly effective and rewarding modality. Today we celebrated my mom’s 90th birthday with a 24-family member Zoom call. It was awesome and she was so happy. My wife and I have had “virtual cocktails” with different groups of friends. My book club just scheduled a Zoom gathering, where good wine, of course, will be enjoyed (just by ourselves in our respective homes). In short, I’ll be interested to see the degree to which video conferencing might replace in-person meetings once the pandemic fears abate.

Empathy is on the rise. Whether walking outside (in areas with few people with appropriate social distance) or on any manner of interaction, I’ve felt a level of warmth and connection that is on a different level than “normal” life. Separate from the political arena, my experience is that most people believe we’re in this thing together, and that in these hard times it’s better to be kind and connected than cold and aloof. My hope, of course, is that the connectivity arising from the fear remains after that fear is gone, that people take that extra beat to think “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to be consciously kind and thoughtful? Doesn’t that make life a whole lot better?”

Family first. Having our kids reeled in from their respective lives was challenging on many fronts. But first and foremost, we know how fortunate we are to all be together and able to live life, albeit a very different life than the one we led a few short weeks ago. The quality time we’ve had at a point in life where it wasn’t at all expected has turned into a gift. This crisis 100% sucks and I wish it hadn’t happened and hurt anyone, anywhere, but to the extent it has brought our nuclear family even closer together I’m deeply thankful for some tangible positive fall-out from the strangest and scariest crisis of my lifetime.

Deep partnership is priceless. I’ve written before how much time Brad, Jesse and I spend together: we eat lunch together every day; we don’t have separate offices, just standing desks and a lounge area in the same space; and we spend a lot of time supporting each other with our respective lead managed investments. Little did I know the next-level value that would emerge from today’s circumstance — namely that our degree of closeness and depth of understanding how each other thinks and feels has made “remote partnership” more intimate than seemed possible.

While it’s obviously not “business as usual” in the sense of the content of our day-to-day, e.g., spending even more time than usual supporting our existing companies, it’s not that far off. We are speaking with new companies, doing diligence, issuing term sheets and closing investments. And while the in-person element of our relationship is pure gold and irreplaceable, our effectiveness and efforts while remote enable IA Ventures to move forward doing what we do best — seed stage investing in software businesses. And this is a silver lining for which I am truly grateful.