Thanksmas day 6

Well. It's been an entirely shit couple of months. When I wrote the Thanksmas blogs It was November. The fires had started and it was all looking not great, but the really bad smokey days had not yet hit Canberra and so it was easy enough to pretend that this would be a 'normal' bushfire season. But it's not.

So I stopped posting the blogs because they all seemed a bit silly and not really something to talk about - plus I was very busy screaming into the maw on Twitter because I was so overwhelmingly frustrated. I'm back now. I'm no less focused on the issue at hand, but in an effort to find constructive ways to move forward I'm going to finish up the posting my thanks for 2019. So here we go.....

The trouble with any mindfulness practice is that it can all start to feel a bit too overthought and serious, none more-so than when you're writing it out-loud for LinkedIn. Certainly, the idea of 'thanking' investors seems a bit off course. So just to be clear, what I'm thanking is the engagement from people, who also happen to be investors. Not so much as a 'oh-my-god-thanks-so-much-for-the-money/believing-in-me' gush fest, which I've already done in person to the relevant individuals - if we're going to be real about it.

Investors are quite hard to understand, I mean, who are they really? How do you behave around them? What do you do with your hands? Google isn't really helpful. The banner for this article was made of the top images that came up when I searched 'investor'. If these images are anything to go by, investors are a bunch of white men, who engage in nautical pursuits, who have magnetic powers and wear foil jumpsuits.... or something. And perhaps they are, I don't know what Jeremy Kwong Law does in his down time, do you?

Regardless, I've spent an inordinate amount of time Googling how to play the game, to talk in a way that investors will understand, to know what to do with my hands. And rarely found answers that moved the needle much past innocuous statements like: 'Be succinct', 'tell the story', 'be authentic', 'don't be too authentic', 'be real', 'be snappy', 'juggle poodles', 'write compelling emails that make me want to invest', 'be funny without being goofy', 'here's an example of a goofy email that made us invest $1 trillion dollars'.

Most of the information I know today came from great people, who happen to be investors who've taken the time to give me thoughtful feedback that has really helped me do a better job telling the Goterra story. This time I don't have a list of things they've taught me. I only have one thing.

There's no formula.

What! I hear you scream silently at the screen. I know. I wish it was different. It's not. You'll meet an investor who someone else loves and you won't. You'll go through DD with an investor you were totally excited about and somehow you're now wrestling with the notion that you hope you don't need them at all. You'll pitch flawlessly to a new investor, just like you did to the last investor - who LOVES everything about you - and the new investor will be staring at you, blinking rapidly and looking confused. You'll re-arrange, reconfigure and start again so when you pitch the next investor it will be just right. Instead they'll send an email some time later, a digital version of shaking their heads sorrowfully, letting you know they wish there was something they could do, it's not you, it's them......

Likewise, you can have a five minute conversation, where you spill half an Hors d'oeuvres tray down your white shirt and end up with a term sheet. (Potentially an exaggeration but you get my drift). You can pitch the same way 5 times and get 5 different results. You can take feedback from one investor and the next one will tell you it's the most ridiculous way of doing things and you should do it another way.

I won't go on. It's exhausting. However, if there's no real formula and every VC is different. For me, it's been important to see this as something that can be liberating. Two things happen when someone doesn't understand you, or your pitch. They beg off - not awesome but at least you know where you stand. Or they let you know why - for me, it's been really helpful to spend more time, more energy focusing on these engagements, those who have taken the time to provide meaningful feedback - regardless of what it is.

So thank you. To all those who came back with real reasons, with feedback I could sink my teeth into with information that has been really valuable to how I engage. I see you, you foil suit wearing, boat driving people. Thanks.