This past week, I had the chance to listen to one of the founders of an Atlanta unicorn share his experience of choosing his co-founder. A few takeaways:

• Finding a partner who has skills complementary to yours is important. You can’t be good at everything, so you need a partner who’s strong where you’re weak.
• You must trust your cofounder to own functional areas. That doesn’t mean you should expect them to not make mistakes. But you should be able to trust them to own their mistakes and discuss them with others. Their mistakes are learning moments.
• One of the key things that attracted him to his cofounder was their mutual demonstrated habit of learning and improving themselves. Both had coaches, read tons of books, and committed to a path of self-improvement through their actions (not their talk). They’d also both had start-ups fail, and they’d spent time reflecting on their failures.
• Great people want to be held accountable, and good cofounders hold each other accountable (I agree).

All of these are great points, and I’m thankful he shared them. The point about learning and self-improvement really stuck with me. A few weeks back, I shared my thoughts on learning being a throttle on your success. I never thought about it in the context of finding a cofounder before, but it makes a lot of sense. A players want to work with other A players. It’s no different for cofounders. Learning and improving yourself consistently will definitely attract other like-minded A players (and likely lead to outsize success too).

I listened to a founder share his thoughts on initiatives he chose to pursue. He considered both the probability of success and the size of the potential payoff. The ones he green-lighted weren’t the ones most likely to succeed—they were the ones with the biggest potential payoff. He knew some were long shots with only a 50% chance of succeeding, but if they did succeed, the payoff would be enormous. He was comfortable with a 50% chance because the payoff would be game-changing for his company.

I love this founder’s thought process. Most people look for a sure thing, or close to it. This founder understands that most things in life aren’t certain. There’s always a chance that things won’t go as planned. He’s thinking about the probabilities in conjunction with the upside. Said another way, he wants initiatives with a potential reward that’s orders of magnitude larger than the risk.  

Thinking about more than the probability of success is hard to do when something is risky, but it can lead to outsize outcomes!

Today I talked with a founder who recently relocated from Miami to Atlanta. Since I visited Miami last week, that city was top of mind. Given what I observed, I was curious about why he left. He shared his reasons for moving to Atlanta (diversity, various industries, talent pool, etc.) and told me that he purchased a home and plans to be here for the long-haul.

One of the things that sets Atlanta apart is that many founders who relocate see themselves putting down roots and calling Atlanta home for a long time. People can see themselves building a great company and a great life here—they don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. In some major metros, it feels like people are just passing through.

Atlanta is a great city. I’m excited to see what the future holds for it, but I already believe that being a place that people want to call home will be a big part of its legacy.

I was listening to a successful entertainment entrepreneur detail his journey to outsize success. One thing he overemphasized was that he’s in a relationship business. He built the right relationships with people and used the relationships to open doors at opportune times. Eventually, he developed relationships with executives who had immense power, which made an unprecedented run of successes possible.

The key to his success was partnering with someone different from himself. He came from a nontraditional background. He quickly realized he had a hard time connecting with people in the industry, who didn’t know him and weren’t sure what to make of him. So he sought out someone in the industry who had the traditional background that people tended to trust. The two of them were different and had different perspectives on life, but they shared a goal. They saw a massive opportunity that no one was paying attention to. They wanted to be at the forefront of introducing this new market to the masses. They formed a partnership, with the traditional partner being the conduit. He understood both worlds. He was able to lend credibility to two sides who had a distrust of each other. Because of him, the two sides embraced each other and had a crazy run that to this day is hard to believe.

I love this story. It exemplifies how two people from different backgrounds can work together to achieve massive success. And it shows how valuable conduits can be . . . especially in emerging markets!

I had a great chat with a founder friend recently. We talked about what helps people be successful. Many things on the list were what you’d expect. But my buddy elaborated on emotional intelligence, also known as emotional quotient, or EQ. I don’t hear that attribute mentioned too often, so I was curious.

He believes success is usually the by-product of working with others. To maximize your working relationships, you must be self-aware—aware of your emotions and how your reactions to them will affect others. And you must be aware of others’ emotions and how they could affect the task at hand. He went much deeper, but that’s the gist of his position.

I partly agree with my buddy. EQ is important, but you can have success without it. But if you have it, it will help you get the best out of yourself and others.

Today I visited Miami for some meetings. I hadn’t been there in a few years, so I made a point of paying attention to the start-up ecosystem—the parts of it I saw, anyway. A few quick thoughts:

• Energy –There’s a different energy in Miami. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a buzz in the air. Proximity to the ocean’s probably part of it.
• Diversity – The start-up ecosystem has more international diversity than other cities I’ve visited. Miami is more of an international city, so that makes sense.
• Density – The WeWork space I visited was full of people and activity. I spoke with the community manager, and she said all their Miami locations have 95% or greater occupancy. A few are at 100%. As of today, WeWork’s website lists seven locations.
• Passing through – I visited a few places to meet with founders and investors. I got the feeling that, like me, most people were just passing through. I assume this was more a function of where I visited than a representation of the entire ecosystem. I’d like to validate this with more visits.
• Serendipity – Lots of chance encounters are happening in Miami. Lots of people with connections to various start-up ecosystems are moving around the city. It looks like a great place to build relationships with people who have ties to other cities and countries.

I was in town for only a few hours, so these are just flyby observations. I’m looking forward to going back and learning more about the ecosystem.

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I caught up with another investor this week. We recounted her journey from tech start-up founder to venture capital fund founder. As she raised capital from VCs, she recognized that she had the chops to be on the other side of the table as an investor. She also realized there was a lot she didn’t know about the business of venture capital. She knew she had a knowledge gap, in other words.

She was passionate about being an investor, so she set out to fill her knowledge gap. She started by becoming an angel investor to build her muscles around getting deals done. Next, she invested in a few venture capital funds as a limited partner (LP). These investments helped her build relationships with other fund managers and LPs, which helped her develop a better understanding of how to build, grow, and lead a fund.

Fast forward to now: her fund has raised eight figures in capital and is off to the races investing in great founders.

I love this story. It shows that regardless of your starting position, if you’re self-aware and willing to put in the work you can overcome any shortcomings (perceived or real).

I read a quote this weekend that stuck with me:

"If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near."

                                                                                  ~ Jack Welch

Simple but powerful. I’m not sure if I agree about the end being near, but it’s not an ideal position to be in.

Founders should always have a finger on the pulse of their company and be pushing the company to improve. But they should also spend time understanding what’s going on outside the company. What’s happening in the world? What’s happening in their industry? If the company isn’t, at a minimum, keeping pace with the change that’s happening externally, they could become less competitive and ultimately slide into a decline.

There are many cases of companies that had built great businesses but were out of touch with change. One great example is Blackberry. It was the dominant cell phone maker at one point. When Apple introduced the iPhone and the App Store, the landscape changed, and Blackberry didn’t change quickly enough. Blackberry survived, but it’s much smaller than it was when the iPhone was released.

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Hiring is one the hardest things founders—especially early founders—have to do. Building a pipeline of candidates is one thing, and it’s not easy; narrowing it down to the right person is even more difficult. For most people, it’s both an art and a science. One thing I’ve seen repeatedly is a lack of intentionality in the screening process, which results in hiring subpar candidates. Said differently, if you’re not intentional in your process, your team will comprise mediocre performers or worse. To help drive an intentional process, interview for certain attributes.

One attribute I consistently see in A players is a desire for accountability. High-performing people like to be held accountable. They want to do what they’ve committed to and have others ask them about it. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. You don’t become an A player by not doing what you said you would. People who aren’t A players tend to avoid accountability. They may commit to something, but they don’t want people to ask them about it. They want to do (or not do) what they want, when they want. These people can frustrate team members, cause friction in organizations, and impede work getting done.

If you’re building a team, don’t hire for people you’re comfortable with or who are similar to you. Instead, execute an intentional process that zeros in on attributes that matter, like accountability!

I was chatting with a founder this week, and he was asking me how to approach fundraising. Specifically, he was asking how to connect with investors via a warm intro when his circles don’t overlap with theirs. He doesn’t have relationships with people who know venture capital investors.

In the past few months, I’ve reviewed a number of fundraising decks for venture capital firms looking to raise money from limited partners (LPs). One of the things they consistently highlight to LPs is how great their network is. The better the network, the better your deal flow. The better your deal flow, the more likely you are to see a great investment opportunity—or so the logic goes. When you dig a bit, you realize that most examples used to demonstrate a great network are exclusive organizations (think elite schools and companies). So, investors are communicating to potential LPs that they run in exclusive circles that give them access to great founders whose companies would be worthwhile investments.

Lots of investors believe (admittedly or not) that founders should get a warm intro to them. Founders can always send emails directly or use other cold outreach methods, but the warm intro is what most investors value most. This dings founders who aren’t part of exclusive groups that attract venture investors. Investors are communicating to founders: Find a way into my circle. Come meet me where I am.

There’s a network problem in venture capital. Investors expect founders to find their way into exclusive (i.e., narrow) circles to seek investment. LPs view such access as a positive attribute and an indication of potential investment success. To me, it seems it should be the other way around. Investors should have broad networks that allow them to meet founders of all backgrounds where they already are and to see the world from different perspectives. LPs should view broad networks as a positive attribute that could lead to overlooked investments that offer outsize returns.

The network problem in VC is waiting to be solved. When it is, the impact on entrepreneurship is likely to be major!