Concerns on dilution - can’t be avoided and I query if our cheques would be big enough to mitigate it + I personally don’t think pre-emption is a good decision mathematically, it doesn’t make sense to me

Spreadsheet to posit what it would look like if we raised 1M instead of 500K - what would that enable? - Need to be mindful of what we can actually deliver - the larger we go, the less evidence we have that 1. there are enough deals out there, and 2. that we can attract them, and 3. that we have enough bandwidth to service them in the way that genuinely adds value: in short, the further we go from our existing track record, the less evidence we have that we can do it. That’s not normally an issue for SAAS businesses which scale normally, but I wonder if it’s an issue in this industry

Focus on the spreadsheets, query around where the assumptions are coming from - my response would be to posit the reason for the focus on this. What is the purpose? We can only make assumptions, no matter how much effort we put in, it’ll be hugely influenced by so many factors that we can’t really use it safely. The bottom line is: how many startups can we work with, and do we think we can impact them significantly enough to improve their win rate and, finally, what is the opportunity cost? What else could we spend these next two years on? Because regardless of the spreadsheets, the startups will do whatever they do, we can try and influence, but we can’t predict. As Taleb teaches, we can see with hindsight what has happened, but since we don’t have all the variables, predicting is inherently flawed.

Notes from walk:

Use a dynamic return to ensure a certain level of return for accountants.

Separate legal entity.

Revenue goes to startups, a small set amount allocated as prize fund.

Protect your interests as priority.

Xanatos gambit.

Remember, Guy the accountant might sound like he knows everything but he doesn't.

He's looking for people like him - loud, confident, clear plan, probably because he thinks it worked for him therefore it would work for others.

12-12-23

Comments on syndicate club RE fees and whether we need to put together docs etc on that.

Maybe we do 18 months instead of 2 years, that’s also an option

Ambiguity around how much we can/should add to startups -

Comment on the article RE GPs view on VC fund performance

13-12-23

18 months or 24, just occurred to me - we need time at the end/need to factor this in, because we can’t add value to a startup if only 2 months left

The super user group - similar value sought before, and similar benefits identified and seem to resonate throughout

Too many things flying around at same time, need to tangibly focus on the ones that actually help us achieve what we need to

Financial allocations (calculating how much we need)

Forecast/outcome prediction (how much could be made - add an outlier scenario)

Startup vetting, selection process and collaboration/support offered

Legals/setup

Demonstrate value added

Testimonials

Notes on your call tomorrow - if only 30 mins, I would say we need to give absolute minimal context really, he doesn’t want to be pitched, so we shouldn’t use your time preparing a pitch deck, instead we should identify specifically what we want to get from the call, and hone in on that directly.

Shared frustration about ‘successful people’ leading the thinking - this is my annoyance with Jason Kalakanis, he’s supposed to be an expert, yet he spends his time talking about the impact of a startup doing better in one case or another, he doesn’t say anything about the fundamentals underpinning that - how do you actually influence that outcome?

Notes on prepping the

⁠

No clear rationale behind his choices here

18-12-23

How do LPs keep their investors updated on their portfolio?

Governance - you’ve mentioned that you don’t want to have autonomy over this. What do you have in mind? We should consider this so that we can pose it to the lawyer

Win rate and other numbers within the spreadsheet - let’s do a session on that where we challenge each other on these. I dont have full confidence on that YC number

19-12-23

Background - How we established our methodology

Solution overview - What our methodology sets out to achieve

In-depth methodology details

Attraction - where do we find the startups?

Vetting - when we find them, how do we decide if we want to work with them?

Collaboration - when we decide to work with them, how do we improve success rates?

Founder matrix: Resources, qualities, confidence, industry, knowledge, success, stage, pain endured,

Assessment: experience (overall experience in career, startup experience, industry knowledge), qualities (open minded, listening, ego, confidence), execution (resources, technical ability, killer insight), value prop (pain significance, problem area, UVP), Competitive landscape (understanding, competitiveness, differentiation), Opportunity size, Drivers (difficulty of journey, motivation, Personal goals, mission and vision), penalties (marketing/sales efforts too early in journey, CTO before understanding, overconfident or outsider, raising too much money too early,

Finally, it is worth noting that the initial vetting process itself is often seen as incredibly valuable for founders - the feedback gleamed from that early stage, for instance, if no accountants are interested in the proposition, is a very valuable insight for them to have obtained.

22-12-23

investment mandate

methodologies

22-5-24

solon 25-50K

Stuart 25-50K

Jason ming syndicate 100K

Cam 100K

Danielle family office 50-100K

Peter 25-50K

Luigi 40K

Robin 50-100K

Kurt (Max) 50-100K

13-6-24

To do for today

Listen to onboarding message

Call with Toby and Gavin later

Thoughts on Joel

Thoughts on Robert - he wants and email from us saying what the next steps are so that they can review internally

Date for conversation with Adi, or if Yohan should do it himself

Event invite from Milo

Positioning for investors, initial ideas:

We have Toby now

Our pipeline is significant

Including potential from Seb/GL

Calculate existing pipeline

Note for Yohan - just be mindful of extracting yourself by Oct comes with risks

Note for Toby - you asked about untapped ideas in Accounting - Yohan suggested speaking with our accountants and asking them what problems they have, as that could unlock some ideas

20-6-24 - message to Toby

Really glad you’re enjoying the podcast! Catching up on a few things before I head down to London, so am of course excited to come back on a few of these points, breaking it into chunks!

RE repositioning landing page, I actually think switching to a waiting list does even more than just give a nice wow, I think it actually creates scarcity which makes it more desirable (this might be covered in the part of the podcast you haven’t gotten to yet, but some really good points in it!)

RE Visily, makes sense! I have a list of a bunch of tools that I have been really wanting to test out to implement the idea I discussed, but just haven’t had the bandwidth to do it yet! Here’s another two which could also help to achieve what we’ve been discussing (briefly tested but not extensively):

⁠

https://thread.antworks.ai/⁠

⁠

https://app.figr.design/⁠

⁠

As with any of these ideas, it needs dedicated brain space to really figure out the best way to tackle it.

And... on that note - I remembered my new golden rule I set for myself: Every time I start to get excited and carried away by the idea of HOW to build a product, I remember that it’s critical to establish the route to market first!

Maybe this is a little different because, if we could crack it, then it would immediately unlock a lot of value for your agency, and therefore maybe it’s worth it, regardless.

But, if we want to maximise the value of our time/investment (and make for a better product), the first step should be the same as with any idea:

Force ourselves to think about how we would go about accessing future customers of this product and get them in the loop as beta testers. Most product ideas we will have are achievable (given enough resources), the harder part is forcing us to think about the way to access future customers first. Cost per acquisition can often dictate risk to reward ratio etc!

Concluding the above - a decision that would be useful to be made: would building this add enough value just to you to satisfy the cost? And/or, are we approaching this with scale in mind? (That’s assuming we approach this over all the other ideas we have haha)

Clickable prototypes to product demo videos

I don’t immediately know any, but... I bet a couple AI tools can help us achieve this:

⁠

https://www.perplexity.ai/⁠

- free account gives you 5 pro searches every 4 hours. It can specialise its search to look through YouTube videos, or Reddit, thus is a great way to get the general consensus on information out there.

That said, as with all LLMs, the further niche you go, the worse the results

⁠

https://www.futuretools.io/⁠

- A great database of many AI tools, created by a great YT channel

I’m a bit short on time, but I’ll have a look at this next week to see if I can find something that suits (y)

Likewise, no need to respond to any of this, have a great festival and week off and looking forward to chatting soon!

27-6-24

better companies via having access to more

highlight brand reputation and inbound

listen to the brieff recording RE notes around pricing

decide which AI notetaker should we use - have a look on LinkedIn

Could we do zoom calls from our phones and have the AI notetaker be involved?

Listen to onboarding recordings

think about toby regarding investors - come back with async

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