Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, July 15, 2024
by Neil Senturia
The smoking gun. The line in the sand. The courthouse steps. This is the basic triangle of good crime thriller television, novels and yes, elements of all negotiations.
I am fascinated by human behavior and our usual embrace of certainty. I know what I know, but sometimes, when the child with the small shovel is digging at the beach, the gun shows up buried in the sand, and he puts it in his red truck and takes it downtown to the judge.
I am involved in a negotiation (aren’t we all, all the time), and those three principles are currently in play. What I can tell you is that life imitates art. It is exactly when you say, ‘this could only happen in the movies’ that you find sand in your shoes.
The facts in this particular matter are not important. What is critical, however, is that the entrepreneur must always consider carefully that those three pillars are real and figure out how to use them to their benefit. It’s a magic skill set that must be developed.
Allow for unintended consequences, don’t stay too long at the table, but if you think you have pocket aces, look again.
I love founders and entrepreneurs, especially before they have been “certified, proven, anointed or confirmed.” In other words, I want to try to bet on the deal when it is still cloudy and still unknown, when risk is the only certainty.
While I try to quantify my own risk, my better self also wants to show the risk to the founder, to the CEO. I want to show the complexity of the process and no matter your charisma or your pedigree, the puzzle pieces are always being rearranged, often moved as if by unseen hands, and you say how could that happen.
Come on, your company is not governed by an Ouija board, but remember, you are not in as complete control of your destiny as you might like to think you are.
I had lunch recently with a famous and successful entrepreneur/venture capitalist (Bob). I asked him if there was a single moment when he knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Bob told me a story. When he was 12, he asked his grandfather to show him the houses where he had lived growing up. They went to three of them, and each one was smaller than the last, and each one was in a less desirable neighborhood. That was the moment when the young man swore that he was never going to let that happen to him.
Bob had some early successes and sold a couple of companies. He was on a roll, and a bit by chance he stumbled into deciding to start his first venture fund. Now pause here. Every entrepreneur knows about the need to be relentless, but there are varying degrees.
For Bob’s first fund, over a 12-month period, he made 823 phone calls, got 71 in-person meetings and got one, only one, investor who said yes and gave him $10 million. In the venture fund business, that amount of money was barely enough for a latte.
As time passed, successes, more funds and bigger amounts. What resonated with me was the relentless pursuit that he demonstrated at the beginning when he had no real track record. I think perhaps the current crop of young entrepreneurs might not fully appreciate what it takes to get to a “yes.”
Finally, a tricky question for my “parent” readers to ponder. Do you think the next generation will be as successful as you were? In other words, what is the impact of the parent on the child, particularly when the parent has achieved a certain level of success?
Before you write to tell me about parental love, what I am really wondering about is if the discipline and drive from one generation is transmitted to the next, and if so, in what way.
I concede this is a tricky subject and not so easily quantifiable. We recently celebrated D-Day, and we honored “the greatest generation.” Forgive me, but they did not have a lot of social media on the beaches of Normandy.
What are the events in a life that turn one to the unknown entrepreneurial path?
Rule No. 814: Risk is a fixed variable.