David Rosenthal: recommendation

Transcript context

…They are. The production is so, so high quality. It’s a total treat to listen to each one. It’s gotten me into bands I didn’t like before and it's gotten me to songs where now when I hear some of these songs after I hear it get exploded for 20 minutes before, it’s like that song that comes one, that’s one of my favorite songs if it was an episode. That’s awesome. So my Carve Out for the week is an oldie but goodie that was sent to me recently by a really good friend. And I’m so glad he sent it to me because it’s a TED Talk and it’s Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” TED Talk. It’s one of the top 10 TED Talks. It’s interesting that it’s a TEDx Talk done at TEDx Puget Sound here in, I believe it was in Seattle in 2009. It's just such a cool concept and it’s called Start With Why and he ended up writing a book about this. But in the sort of more raw version of the TED Talk, he talks about it as the golden circle and there are three levels of communication about a company or a product or a person or a firm. There’s the what you do, there’s the how you do it, and there’s the why you do it. And 99 percent of companies or firms or products or people say, “Hi, I’m David. I’m a venture capitalist at Madrona Venture Groupin Seattle, Washington. We do seed and Series A deals, invest in seed and Series A stage technology companies largely in the Pacific Northwest and would love to talk to great companies.” So it’s like, people start with what, then they do how and then maybe they do a little bit of why. But if you actually want to inspire people and reach people and do something that has a much higher chance of success, you need to reverse the order and start with why. Say, “I’m David Rosenthal. I believe that all great companies in the Pacific Northwest deserve a chance to have an experience with their venture capital firm that’s every bit as high quality as the best companies in Silicon Valley get. Do you want my money?” Yeah, that was a lot more human than the last.…

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