How to Balance a Long-Term Vision with Short-Term Execution

I think when we talk about balancing near term execution with long term vision, it's a tricky thing to do, but very important. And the reason why is because as an investor thinking about investing in a company that's just getting started at the seed stage, I need to be convinced that you're going to make it to your next series A meaning, for example, how you're going to get your first customers and early traction to build the first product out and reach perhaps your first $1 million in revenue. But at the same time, I'm also trying to understand what this company can look like in 10 years and is there a multi billion dollar kind of market opportunity that we can uniquely capture? So that's two very related yet distinct things that we're underwriting at the time of diligence. So when I look at some founders, sometimes they'll over index on vision and they'll bring huge market numbers and talk about why this is such a big problem and go into all of that detail, but not actually have a clear understanding of. So how are you going to get to the first few customers, what are you going to build for them and how does that translate to your early revenue and that gap when you see you just can't invest because great, you have a great vision, but you need to be able to articulate the team, product and financial operating targets that you have during that particular phase as you go from 0 to 1. On the flip side, if you come to us only painting a picture of, okay, very tactically, these are the five customers that we think we're gonna go after and that gets us to this much revenue. And these are the immediate next steps that we're going to take. And you have a very tight plan for what you're going to do in the next 12 to 24 months and get to your first Series A milestones, but aren't able to articulate how this can be a multibillion dollar venture scale business and how it's actually going to transform an entire industry, then yet again, there's no investment opportunity here. Because if you can't articulate at the time of investment of why this is such a massive opportunity, that's also a reason to pass. So those are two things that I would make sure that you check you've addressed and make sure you hit on both for this specific reason. I think the most important thing that I often find myself having to tease out from founders, rather than them proactively being able to articulate, is actually more on the near term milestones. It may be because as a founder, you think VCs are looking for the big long term vision picture. And yes, we are. And yes, we only want to invest and will invest when we can fundamentally dream with you and imagine and come to believe that there is a massive business opportunity and market opportunity here. But with that said, we will never invest and cannot get there if there isn't a clear near term plan and path that we can see that is believable and feasible in the near term of how you're going to tactically reach your next immediate milestones in the next 12 to 24 months with the size of capital that you've raised. So that's usually the final stage of an investing process. The deepest conversations that we're having in those final moments and even right after the round closes is around finessing some of those details around, yes, we raised $2 million in early stage seed round. What are we going to do with that money and how are we going to get to the next stage that we need to together? And those milestones focused on near term execution are just as important, if not even more at times, as the long term vision that you have for the company.