"They're the ones who reached out to me"

AKA you don't want the plumber who can come right away.

Was helping a friend of mine who was in the latest YC batch with the fundraise for their very early stage company. We connected a week or two into him kicking off his raise, and he was frustrated by the conversations and results. I asked him for the list of people who he was speaking to, and it was basically a long list of multi-stage VC firms. 

Surprised, I asked how he created the list.

His answer? “They’re the ones who reached out to me.”

I laughed. “You’ve got to take control of your process and figure out who you want to partner with. Right now, by relying on inbound, you’re sorting for the largest firms because they’re the ones that have the resources to have junior people cold outreaching.” We then brainstormed a better list.

Reflecting on it, I realized there is a funny quality with some things where what you think is correlated with the qualities you want, may actually be an anti-correlation. For example, let’s talk plumbers…. 🙂 Your water heater breaks and you *think* you want the plumber who can come right away. But for anything more complicated than a clogged drain/toilet, you don’t really want the plumber who can come tomorrow. What you want is a high-quality, ethical plumber. Turns out, those plumbers are probably booked until next week (trust me on this!). As I learned the hard and expensive way, the extra week of suffering is worth it.

I can’t tell you how often I see this pattern. Indeed I see it with my own companies when we kick off a process to do a follow-on. It’s so much easier just to look at the people who are reaching out to you, and indeed it’s a great place to start. But the decision of who you partner with is so important (particularly at the early stages), you owe it to yourself not just to look at the list of people who reached out, but to ask yourself, "who do I want?”, and then find a way to them. 

Dall-e’s interpretation of “A plumber who is going to cheat you, impressionistic”