Jason Lemkin says he's a worse investor since losing in-person meetings with founders after March 2020. Remote investing feels more transactional, though some VCs like Christoph Jansen have made it work. Founders often don't prioritize meeting anyway.
I. Eisenberg at a left, who's a very close friend and an investor in my funds, told me, like, how many of your founders have you met in person?
Yeah.
And he is very, very intent on this. How do you feel about the need to meet in person in this Zoom invested world?
Honestly, Harry, like, I mean, I've. I have not figured this out since March 2020. I. What I was very good at with this inbound strategy was getting an inbound thing, and I didn't care where the founder. I invested in Estonia, France, all these different countries. But when the founders came here from the US I was often the first one they'd meet. Okay. Off the plane. And even if they went back to Belgium or wherever it was, I inherently got all that benefit of that socialization from that meeting, and that's gone forever. Like, the first meetings will never happen in person again. Right. Even if you're in San Francisco, you're all in. They'll never happen. And I'm a worse investor for it. I have not figured out the answer to your question. I will say I'm a worse investor for it. And I don't have all the answer. What I really don't like is that founders don't care. They don't care. They really don't care if they meet. Investing has gotten so transactional that even if they want you on the cap table, they don't care. They just want to check the boxes and move on. And so I don't have the answer. I think some of this advice we get is old school, right? I mean, we have to be thoughtful. The world has changed, that we will never go. When I think of what San Francisco was like up until in like 2019, like, it feels so far in the past now. It feels like they should make a movie about this because this world was so different and. And I still miss it and I was a better investor in it. But we can't go back and you can't meet every founder face to face at the C level. Right. And then I look at friends of ours like Christoph Jansen.9, which has ended up developing epic funds after fund. And Christoph, in the beginning, perfected investing all across the world, over, over pre zoom, over, over gotomeeting or whatever. We can, we can ask them. So obviously it can be done wildly, successfully, but you have to countermand that risk in some fashion. Right. And I think taking a high risk without really getting to know folks is risky. On the other hand, I do like folks that are like, well, VC's over index on their ability to suss up a founder in a face to face. Like it's like walking around, like doing a walk and talk in Chelsea or wherever. East London is so magical that all of a sudden you're, you're such a great student of human nature because so many founders are great bullshit artists, right? Sam, Blankman, Freed and friends. So it's not that I think so.
Many VCs are as well, my friend.
What I do think the face to Face does for me, for me is and I think this is what we lost in Covid is it builds trust. And maybe this is going back to the errors you and I have both made. It builds trust. It's not that I'm such a great judge of character. There's so many different cultures in the world. I don't understand ex what culture is like in other countries. I do think they're not all. I think entrepreneurs all have kind of the same culture. But I, but I do. I think that venture is so full of risk. It's so full of. I remember being terrified my first check into Pipedrive would go into the wrong bank account or this would happen. I was still terrified. And founders forget that VCs are taking bounded risk, right? It's not the whole fun but they're taking. They don't get to know you that quickly. It's so risky and you wanted one is you want to de risk things. For VCs, that increases the odds you get a term sheet. But for VCs, man, it's just when you, when you build a relationship, it's just old school sales. When you build a relationship, it goes better, doesn't it? It goes better. In the tough times there's more honesty, there's less baloney. And so when we skip that step, we just never have that relationship. And I don't like it. I don't like it.
