Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…I think there's a big need for investors that have functional expertise. In traditional VCs. They don't necessarily, maybe they founded companies, maybe they've always been investors or sometimes VC and they really come from sales roles or PM roles. But for me and for marketing and maybe for some of the roles of other people are in, there's not a lot of investors or even advisors from that function and they need help there. And so I think more and more founders are seeing, instead of having advisors or even hiring someone at a function early, it's like, let me lean on angel investors for that. And so I make it very clear when I talk to founders, this is how I'm going to help. I'm going to help you build your marketing function. I'm definitely going to help you hire, or I'm going to help you shape the job description of the process. I'm probably going to refer you some candidates. I might even refer the candidate that you hire which has happened a bunch of times. And then I'm going to work with that person to make sure that they're setting the right strategy and doing the right things. And so being that clear on here's my exact value add is incredibly helpful. And I mean, we get into every deal that we want to. We being I have a business partner named Kathleen, that I do all this with and we can get into any deal. Which I think as an early angel investor, I'm like, why are people saying it's hard to get into a deal? I don't have this problem. And that's not me tapping myself on the shoulder. It's just showing there's huge shortage here. So your skillset might be really valuable to founders and even if you feel like, I don't understand how everything works at a company or things like that, your skillset could be really valuable and they might not see it. It's also when you have a unique skill set and a unique way that you help well articulated. We're going to help you build marketing, it's easy to understand. It makes me easier for other people to bring you into deals. Versus here's another generalist investor that's just going to help. So it's almost like you got to product market yourself. What's the product that you're offering? And then it's so easy, you know Lenny to bring me into deals where they might need some marketing help and there's tons of investors that do that which gets us to deal flow that we need. So I just think if you have a niche or you have an area where you're particularly skilled, you can really leverage that into being a sought after angle. Now, if that makes you a good investor, I'm not sure, there's lots of other things you need to get up to speed on to actually be a good investor. But from the standpoint of helping founders and getting into deals, that can be really helpful. Awesome. And the other part is you actually have to deliver because then people share more deals with you. And as I said earlier, I've heard so often how helpfully you've been to founders and so that's an important element. Yeah, you definitely have to deliver. And again, I think that's where it's really helpful to say where you're going to deliver. So they're not necessarily expecting you to deliver on every little thing. They're expecting me to help them hire their marketer, hire contractors in marketing, fill in gaps until they have the marketing team that they need. And so they know when to come to you and then you respond. I think that's also like when people have full-time jobs, I think it's hard to be able to do that full-time jobs that aren't this, it's hard to be able to just tap in and do this kind of stuff. So it's like don't go overboard because your reputation really, really matters and that's how we've always seen it. We want to be the most helpful angel investors or now we have a small client, but the helpful sort of most helpful investors that you have in your cap table regardless, not just within marketing but within everything. And we do that because we can go really deep on an area and we're always responsible on those areas. And it's good to hear it's working because that's what we're trying to do is be really, really helpful. And the other thing too, the last thing I'll say on that is each founder probably thinks, maybe they don't, that it takes us a lot more time than it actually does to be helpful in that area. I had the same conversations over and over again about how to hire a marketer. I can do it in my sleep. So me having that conversation with you and dropping knowledge that you haven't heard, this is what I do all day. But it feels really new because they don't have a lot of people talking to them about marketing. We just have a bunch of candidates that we talk to and our newsletter generates candidates that we talk to. So anyone can go on our website and get on our list of candidates that we're referring. I talk to one or two candidates a week from that to just meet more marketers. So I have a list of marketers I can refer and say, it's really easy when clients ask me for referrals. So it starts to scale pretty well if you have that niche where you help.…

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