What it means to end

How you finish matters. A lot.

You can destroy years of goodwill in a matter of seconds if you are careless about how you leave a job or an engagement. I was given a stark reminder of this recently through Arsenal’s recent outgoing transfers.

Two transfers in particular beautifully illustrate the importance of finishing the race well.

Our long-time captain and a key player of 9 years, Laurent Koscielny, just completed a transfer to Bordeaux in France’s Ligue 1. He was an invaluable member of the squad and an absolute key to all of the success we have had during his time here.

Carl Jenkinson, a perennial back-up who has played few games for Arsenal and spent recent seasons either injured, on loan, or riding the bench, just completed a transfer to Nottingham Forrest in the English Second Division.

On face value, one would assume that Koscielny would be thanked for his long years of exemplary service and that Jenko’s time at Arsenal would end with the lack of fanfare befitting a player who never was quite good enough to make an impact.

This assumption could not be further from the truth and it is all down to the way they ended their time.

Carl ended his time at Arsenal with this. Koscielny ended his time with this. And this. And this.

For 99% of his time at Arsenal, Koscielny was beloved. The way he left will, unfortunately, have a disproportionate effect on how he is remembered.

Jenkinson never really made a meaningful impact on the team. But he will be remembered as a humble, team player who gave everything his all and always did right by the club and his teammates.

Impact on the team aside, I think these two transfers do a great job of emphasizing the importance of finishing well.

How you finish matters. A lot.

Let it be Fear

The world recently got an example of the importance of finishing well that you may be more familiar with.

The final season of Game of Thrones was decried as a monumental failure almost universally by fans. Just look at the average episode ratings from season to season.

Look. You will never be able to please everyone. The show was always going to struggle to live up to the massive hype that surrounded it. But I struggle to think of another example of a show that has had so much excitement and hype around it that fell on its face so spectacularly.

I think if people are being honest, the vast majority of their criticism is centered around how things were executed instead of the bullet points of what actually transpired. Danny going crazy and Bran winning the throne could have been done in a way that felt genuine and impactful (the butchering of Jaime’s storyline however was completely unforgivable). Instead, this season was rushed and the decision to abbreviate it only exacerbated what would have been a monumental task no matter what. This led to a cascade of failures and viewers couldn’t help but feel the whiplash.

Finishing is important. How you finish is what will be remembered. Will Game of Thrones be remembered for being one of the most impactful shows of the last two decades. Sure. But more than anything its memory will be colored by its lackluster ending.

Finishing has always been a strength of mine. Unfortunately, that strength has been developed out of absolute and self-inflicted necessity. I have a nasty habit of starting myself out in a hole and being forced to agonizingly claw my way out. In college and high school, my final semester was my strongest academically. When my friends were chilling out and kicking back, I was hitting the books and taking an inflated course load. I had to do this because my first semesters were my weakest. I pretty much trended directly up every single semester. I made it work, but it definitely was learning the hard way.

It’s a weakness of mine that I am constantly working on.

My strategy is to start with the end in mind. Don’t start a new project of freshman year thinking you have all the time in the world.

Time moves quickly.

Visualize the end and work backward to figure out what you need to do at each stage along the way to reach your goals.

Because believe me, it is a lot easier to start well and maintain your momentum, then it is to begin in a hole and be forced to finish in a frenzy.

And whatever you do.

Don’t ever pull a Game of Thrones.

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A Game of Venture Loans

The premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones is tonight. I am sure it will not surprise you to learn that I am a massive fan. I have read the books and watched and rewatched the series. One of the major overarching themes of the show is the zero-sum competition all characters experience in Westeros.

In the game of thrones, you either win or you die.

At a much more benign level, we see this zero-sum phenomenon play out in our world too. One of the reasons I have never been particularly enamored with the public markets is that there is someone “on the other end” of every trade. What this means, is that if you are purchasing a stock, the person who is selling you that stock almost always expects it to go down. If the stock goes up, you win and they lose.

I love venture in part because it is not a zero-sum game. There isn’t anyone sitting on the other end of our “trade.” When done well, there is enough incentive alignment to ensure that no party is succeeding at the cost of anyone else. Investors in funds win when VCs win when entrepreneurs win (say that fast five times). Perfectly in balance, as all things should be <<insert Thanos meme here>> (speaking of Thanos, it’s kinda wild that GoT, Avengers, and Star Wars are all concluding in 2019. I am firmly aboard each respective hype train, but it will be a bit bummer when all is said and done).

The one area that this does not necessarily hold true is getting into a hot round. The dynamics are such that in venture, entrepreneurs are always trying to thread the needle between raising too little (short cash runway) and raising too much (dilution). This means that for a given company, at a given valuation, there is going to be a cap to the amount of money the entrepreneur is going to want to raise. For most entrepreneurs, the worry is getting enough dollars in the door to close out the round, but for the hottest deals with experienced entrepreneurs or in a sexy space, rounds can fill up quickly. This can lead to significant competition between investors trying to get into the round. While not as competitive as Stark vs Lannister, things can heat up pretty quickly.

I should note that I have only ever witnessed this competition second-hand. My experience so far has mostly been centered around investing in the Midwest where the focus is much more on getting enough money around the table than trying to elbow to the front of the line. The simple fact is that there are not nearly the same numbers of investors here as there are in a bay area or a New York. That is changing as more and more people start paying attention to the exciting things being built in cities like Columbus, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and more.

I am thrilled for this increased attention and I think that it will be hugely beneficial to the region as a whole.

My one hope is that midwestern investors can maintain the same collaborative nature that they have cultivated thus far.

Because zero-sum competition is not a ton of fun.

Just ask the Starks.