I came across this while cleaning up my Dropbox and was so delighted to find tidbits of wisdom here. 

Students, faculty, family, friends:

I am grateful to have a chance to address you on this special day. It is also, indeed, a good time to reflect on the guideposts for success we may need as we step into the wider world outside CNG.

Those guideposts, or lessons, are all around us.  Take a quick survey of popular culture, and you’ll find that those catchy, omnipresent commercial slogans, if properly interpreted, actually do offer decent advice for life in a nutshell. Let me prove it with some examples.  
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Vodafone’s slogan, for instance, tells us to “make the most of now.” Every moment over the last few years has been spent anticipating the next. But we have forgotten how to live the present, a present that tonight is one of happiness and celebration. Make the most of now.
 
Coca Cola’s slogan tells us that, “The only thing like Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola itself.” Today, we will leave this auditorium with one thing that nobody else has. There will be millions of people out there with a high school diploma, millions of people trying to make a living. But each one of us will be the only one with total control over our own life. The only person like me is myself. I am speaking to the artist, the loner, the quiet one, the minority, the outcast, the rebel and the intellectual; do what you know, do what you love, be you no matter how “average” you think you are, because there is a world beyond this field and that world is reality—reality welcomes all types of individuals.
 
Energizer’s adorable bunny “keeps going and going and going.” At times, we have all felt like we want to give up. But in the midst of an impossible day, a stressful moment or a sad defeat, we must remember that the best never stop. The best persevere.
 
AT&T’s legendary slogan: “Reach out and touch someone,” suggests that life is about the effect we have on people; about leaving this place a little better than it was before our existence, whether it be by saving a life or simply putting a smile on someone’s face.
 
Apple’s slogan, “Think outside the box,” pushes us to innovate and to topple barriers. If we want something to change, we have to defy status quo. We will always be criticized by others, but we cannot allow ourselves to be boxed in by other people’s judgments or limitations.
 
Someone once said that, “Life is five percent what happens to us and 95 percent how we deal with it.” Fellow graduates, we must remember these words as we journey through life. Go out and be happy. Regardless of what you do, strive to be the best and happiest teacher, mechanic, doctor, actress, businessman, rock star, whatever you want to be. And when faced with those inevitable setbacks, make sure that 95% lifts you back up.
 
I leave you with one last thought, made famous by Nike, which I hope will be your trampoline to a rewarding and exciting life: “Just do it!”
 
 Thank-you
 
 
 

Taking a breather is not something I’m particularly good at but I find that when I don’t listen to the voice inside me that tells me to slow down, it inevitably catches up to me. My doctor recommended I go on bed rest last week (I am welcoming a newborn in just a few days); and having spent the last week bound to my bed has naturally led to some bigger picture thinking and got me reflecting on my work and my life.
We launched Level Ventures in 2016 with the mission to fuel the ambitions of missionary founders by investing in transformative business ideas. Having spent the last year meeting and working alongside hundreds of entrepreneurs, I’m as excited as ever about the power of entrepreneurial teams to transform industries.
And while we made 13 investments in 2016, my work over the past year felt largely reactionary — beholden to other people’s emails, calls, messages, etc. Having a reactionary workflow often meant I lost sight of the big picture and allowed calendar distractions –instead of meaningful, intentional work- suck up all of my energy.
2017 will be the year I slow down to speed up. Having to juggle kids and a professional career forces you to realize that life’s most enduring satisfactions come from a commitment to the long game. So instead of opting for instant gratification, my goal is to see my life and work as a multi-decade project and then reason backwards to small steps I can take today to bring that dream to life.
Being intentional about your work is particularly important when it comes to investing, where organized thinking, a clear vision for the future of the world and a differentiated investment thesis helps increase the likelihood of scoring big wins. In a world where momentum investing and herd mentality can turn anyone into a fast follower, it’s important to pause and make sure you are always acting with conviction.
That’s exactly what I’m hoping to do here, to clarify areas/themes I’m excited about in an effort to organize my thoughts and hold myself accountable to my convictions. This list is a mix of both specific and broad thematic concepts.

What I’m Interested in Investing In:

V-Commerce/Internet-Enabled Brands
The Internet, by enabling ubiquitous connectivity, has enabled creators to build far deeper and more meaningful relationships with consumers and has therefore eliminated the need for mass-retailer gatekeepers to connect the creator/designer with her customer. The creator can now control the conversation, the timing, the voice, the context, and the customer experience in ways that were simply not possible before.
With the Internet, you are no longer constrained by geography or capital (anyone can set up an online shop). The economics of removing these constraints means you can build a business that is very relevant to a specific group of customers and not have to worry about there being enough of them in a given geographic location. By being more specific to your customers’ values and aspirations, the bond and loyalty forged by Internet-enabled brands is incredibly strong.

Technology opens a new dimension of possibilities for brands to engage with customers, and I am excited to see more creators building brands with strong voices, obsessing over user experience and customer happiness, and leveraging the distribution advantages the Internet provides to scale faster and cheaper.
Some of my favorite brands in this category include Glossier, Casper, and Monica + Andy. (Full disclosure, I am an investor in Monica + Andy)

Inefficient Processes Improved by Modern Software
There are still way too many processes that are too damn difficult that can easily be solved by modern software — from monitoring your health insurance to scheduling meetings to planning trips to filling out a prescription.

I’m excited by companies that make customer’s lives easier by automating mundane processes, freeing up people’s time to focus on things they truly care about. For example, getting a price quote for insurance coverage with your mobile phone is now possible with Cover. Zip Drug helps you avoid long lines at the pharmacy by delivering your prescription within the hour. Sign easy allows me to sign documents on the go, eliminating the need for a printer. There are still so many areas to improve on and I am excited about the potential for AI to unleash a new wave of innovation here. I hate when I hear a startup defining itself as “AI for XX”. What excites me is not AI itself, but rather the specific use cases in which it will make software work cheaper, faster and more accurately such that inefficient, paper-based processes can be replaced.

Simplification by Curation
When I search Foursquare to find a place for breakfast or Netflix to find a new show my life gets more complicated, not less. Search has grown tremendously but it’s time to start curating. Helping people with discovery is less risky than saying “here’s one option we know you’ll like,” but the latter is a more appropriate use case most of the time. I want a service that tells me exactly what health insurance plan I should get based on my needs. I want a service that tells me exactly what to buy my brother on his birthday. I want a service that tells me exactly which small business accounting software I should use.
Like Benedict Evans said, “All curation grows until it requires search. All search grows until it requires curation.” One of my favorite companies in this category is Cura, launching soon (full disclosure, I am an investor). When David Goldberg’s dad was diagnosed with brain cancer, he went on a mission to discover, learn and search the world over to learn everything he could about what the holistic world had to offer. He was overwhelmed by the amount of information there was and how hard it was to understand. That inspired him to build Cura — they do all the work: find leading alternative care specialists, research products to ensure quality, and deliver everything in one easy to use package so that chronic illness patients can easily take advantage of holistic care.

Flexible Jobs
Online marketplaces are morphing the traditional 9–5 workplace into a project-oriented, DIY free for all. The increase in women in the workforce has placed a new premium on flexibility, and while Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy have led the way, I think there is a lot more to come here.
From new use cases to the backend infrastructure powering these businesses such as Jobble (helps businesses find and vet on-demand workers), I am interested in companies building the infrastructure for a post-job society and challenging the fundamental assumptions around employment and careers.

Modern Family
As a mother of a toddler and a soon to be newborn, I can confidently say that today’s world is not designed to meet the needs of the 21st century mother. Parenting is tough and I’d like to see technological innovation be applied in more creative ways to make our jobs easier. For example, services that make it easier for parents to automate the scheduling and management of everything from doctor’s appointments to paying school fees, platforms that connect parents with their kids, smart products that can help parents deal with sleepless infants, easier access to trusted caregiving, etc…

Products for the 99%
For all the great work that Sillicon Valley has done, it’s also true that a lot of the energy of very smart people is focused on problems for the 1% (delivering cookies to your door in under an hour, at a premium cost) instead of fearlessly tackling ambitious problems. 1% products, such as another on demand grocery delivery service are far less interesting to me than products that save people money by recasting the cost structure of incumbents (through D2C, peer to peer models, etc…). Millennials need new ways to save money and I’m excited to see more founders using technology to reach the mass market with better, cheaper experiences.
Examples that I like in this space are varied, and include: Affirm, Metromile, Price (Full disclosure, I am an investor), Tala, Everytable, and TurboTax.

Voice Interfaces
I’m excited about the emergence of voice interfaces and their ability to blend digital experiences with the real world so seamlessly. When we’ve got our hands full, when we’re driving, working, or are just too tired to look at our phones, voice will be there. The disappearance of tech will lead to a world where the Internet will be part of your presence all the time without tethering you to your phone all day. Poor system performance in the past has meant that voice has been slow to go mainstream, but I think Amazon’s Alexa is a big inflection point here. Their open API also means great companies can quickly grow using Alexa as the hub.
I would like to speak to more founders building products that are voice first.

Future of software development / Programming without coding:
Programming and coding today are regarded as the same thing, because there aren’t tools and platforms that divorce the skill sets. If you want to program an app, you have to code it — there’s just no way around it. In the future, I think software development will be accessible to everyone, empowering more people to create.
I’m generally interested in platforms that allow you to build programs without writing a line of code. Here is a list of companies in this space curated by Product Hunt. I think we’ve just scratched the surface here, and would love to talk to more entrepreneurs tackling this.

— — — --

I will be on a brief hiatus as I welcome my 2nd child to the world, but if you are building a startup that is relevant to any of these themes, I would love to talk to you. Please feel free to reach out to me at sari@level.vc and I will get back to you as soon as I emerge from the craziness that is sleeplessness/adjusting to newborn & toddler parenting.

Over the past year, I’ve met with hundreds of founders, worked alongside dozens of founding teams to help them launch their companies, and invested in a handful of companies. In both my role as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Rokk3r Labs and as a partner at Level Ventures, my job is to pick and partner with winning teams and position them for success.

​As a result, I spend a lot of my time thinking about the qualities that make some companies succeed. The biggest cliché in VC is to say, “we back great founders”. People invest in people, duh. As an investor, you want to see the excitement in their eyes, feel the fire in their stomach, and believe that they have grit to fight. I could be pitched the same idea by two different people and only get excited about one of them. Investing is a sensory process. But since character traits only reveal themselves over time, how do you evaluate founders? That is the million-dollar question in venture.

To be or to want to be a founder, you have to be in some sense crazy. To believe that you can make a difference in the world takes audacity, especially considering the odds are so highly stacked against you. But over time, I have come to distinguish between two types of crazy in founders — the calculated enthusiasts and the naïve optimists. The calculated enthusiasts are the good kind of crazy. They are bold and audacious, but they actually sound believable. Like Sam Altman said, “You want to sound crazy. But you want to actually be right.” Calculated enthusiasm sounds like a pretty hazy term but these are the qualities that I repeatedly see in calculated enthusiasts that get me excited:

They are Problem Driven

I’ve heard too many entrepreneurs present themselves and immediately jump into a really cool technology or beautifully designed product before articulating the problem they’re trying to solve. Calculated enthusiasts start with the problem. They focus on a single value proposition and their attachment to a singular problem keeps them laser focused on doing one thing really, really well.

More startups die of indigestion than starvation. — Bill GurleyBuilding a company from nothing is hard enough — calculated enthusiasts make it easier by starting with a compelling problem that addresses a clear pain point.

They Understand the Importance of Distribution

No matter how great your product or service, it means nothing unless people know about it. Acquiring customers is not easy and companies that win are not necessarily those that build the best product, but those that are best at reaching customers.
The notion that you can grow your startup through paid media alone is flawed. While this might have been true a few years ago, it doesn’t work anymore. Thousands of apps are introduced to the app store every month, and yet most smartphone users download zero apps per month. With big brand putting a lot of money into Facebook ads and programmatic display, you need to create distribution advantages for your business to stand out.

Having a great distribution hack can be the difference between a viable business and a defunct one. AirBnB couldn’t have started without Craigslist. Uber solved the traditional chicken and egg problem by subsidizing adoption in the early days. Dropbox wouldn’t have scaled as quickly without their free storage for sharing with friend’s tactic. OpenTable’s consumer reservation marketplace wouldn’t have succeeded without creating standalone value for restaurants through their booking management systems.

All of these companies had highly idiosyncratic, highly effective go-to-market strategies.

Having a good idea is step one, but the second, less obvious step is figuring out how to get that product/app in the hands of users. Naïve optimists employ hope as a distribution strategy. Calculated enthusiasts understand that unless they engineer distribution, they’ll never get to the first 10,000 users.

They have thought through Defensibility

I always ask founders what they perceive to be the biggest challenge their company will face. Naïve optimists shun skepticism, while calculated enthusiasts give thoughtful and honest answers, combining an awareness of their flaws with reasonable hypotheses about how they might overcome these challenges over time.

Thinking through the defensibility of an idea is something many founders often ignore. Defensibility can come in many ways — it can be in the form of proprietary IP, unique domain competence, access to scarce supply, high switching costs, or it can be intangible assets like a startup’s founding team or brand. For example, not everyone can launch a make-up line with the success Glossier has seen — it is Emily’s background and story what have allowed her to build the brand equity she has in such a short time span.
They have a Disruptive VisionMissionary founders endure in situations where mercenaries often quit, because they have a massive transformative purpose that keeps them going.Slack is not selling a group chat tool, they are selling organizational transformation. Stewart Butterfield understood that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

Thinking in exponential terms is the undercurrent running through today’s breakout companies. Amazon is endless selection and convenience at the best price. Netflix’s original marketing was more selection and convenience than your neighborhood Blockbuster, and no late fees. Airbnb is all about unique accommodations and it’s cheaper than a hotel. All of these companies are a 10x improvement on experience AND price. They’ve defined a new space, challenged conventional wisdom and changed the rules on incumbents.

While it is impossible to discern every quality a founder has, the way founders talk about themselves and the company they are building illuminates the founders’ beliefs about the world, and about the reality they will create as a result of those beliefs. Calculated enthusiasts are problem-driven, thoughtful, self-aware, mission-driven, determined, and resilient.

If you are a naive optimist, you will be disillusioned when you realize you don’t have customers, or revenue, or a clear path forward (true of most companies in the early days). When you’re aware of your risks, you don’t get demoralized — you keep pushing through the obstacles because you knew from the beginning that was part of the game.
A lot of things need to go right for a seed to sprout: fertile soil, the right mix of rain and sun, and good luck so it’s not eaten by a passing bird. The same goes for a company. For a company to take off, a multitude of factors come into play.

But in seed investing, where people are the only thing you have control over, you better be sure you’re backing a calculated enthusiast and not a naïve optimist.

If you're a calculated enthusiast working on a great idea, feel free to email me at sari@level.vc

A better experience for a higher price is not something new. The convenience of getting your groceries delivered, your laundry picked up and delivered, and your cravings at your door within the hour is only valuable insofar as you can get equivalent quality at a lower price. In other words, convenience alone is not enough. The magic happens when you provide a better experience AND a lower price. The lower price is everything. A lot of people mistakenly adopt the Uber for X model in industries where the unit economics do not allow them to provide the product or service at a lower price. The beauty of Uber is that it is better, faster, and cheaper than a taxi.

Saving people money has been the driving force behind many of the biggest consumer wins of the Internet area.

Sarah Tavel of Greylock breaks down why here. 

In the last year since I became a mother, I’ve frequently been asked, “How is it being a mom?” and “How do you do it all?” 
These are such complex and profound questions and yet in the whirlwind of adjustments that only first-time parents can understand, my answers have been admittedly stupid. Now, one year out, and my head still spinning, here’s a fresh stab at addressing these questions.
 
Being a mother is the most addictive, intoxicating feeling. Everyone tells you and yet it’s impossible to understand — it’s the purest form of love –full stop. I get blown away when I see the mental leaps and connections my son makes on a daily basis. There are moments when I gaze into his eyes and feel something that can best be described as wholeness. My role in the world has become clearer –I am helping someone realize their potential as a human being and see the world in a unique way. There are moments that are just so perfect.
 
But then there are other times. There will be nights where you are so tired that your legs are shaking; when you will be so burnt out all you want to do is listen to a Product Hunt podcast in peace. There will be days where you’ll be a Dove commercial away from a nervous breakdown. Days when you’re stuck in traffic with a crying baby, every goddamn traffic light is red, and it feels like the world is colluding against you. Days when your baby will just feel like crying, and you won’t know why, so you’ll wonder whether you’re the only mother that doesn’t enjoy every minute of parenthood. There will be days when you’ll have shit (literally) in your hands while simultaneously trying to catch pee with a blanket. You’ll be frustrated, question what the hell you’re doing, and the exhaustion will get the best of you. There will be moments when all you want is for your baby to nap, and you’ll beat yourself up about feeling that way. You’ll feel guilty for not being overwhelmed with happiness every minute of every day. When your alarm clock is a tiny pair of lungs at 4am and your idea of a vacation is a 15-minute drive to Whole Foods, it’s hard to ‘keep calm’. You understand rationally that the sleep deprivation only represents about .005% of your life and yet it’s really hard to maintain that perspective when it’s 3am and you have a busy workday ahead and the sleeplessness just seems to go on and on forever.
 
There will be weeks where you finally feel you’re getting into a balanced rhythm of immersion at work and home and your baby gets sick, which throws your whole week out of whack. You’ll find time to check e-mail, answer Slack messages, and schedule a few meetings. However, deep work –the kind that gets you moving ahead — will seem impossible. It’s hard to call your creativity into existence in between driving to a pediatrician for a checkup and thinking about whether there’s enough food for dinner in the fridge. The endless context shifting leads to a perpetual state of quasi presence that inevitably erodes focus. Attention is a zero sum game — if we pay attention to one thing, we’re inevitably paying less attention to another. The resulting state of divided attention that splits your mind into a thousand tiny pieces is hard to contend. At times, it feels impossible to reconcile the need for total immersion when building great companies with the unpredictability in your schedule that comes with having children.
 
But, and this is a big BUT… even on weeks where you’re finally in a good groove, there’s The Guilt. The one that won’t let you stay late in the office that one night where you’re finally so close to having a creative breakthrough. You’ll feel guilty for letting your son watch TV at 5am so you can sleep for 10 more minutes. You’ll feel guilty if the apple isn’t organic. The list goes on.
 
Just the other day, as I was addressing my one year old, telling him how much I loved him, my husband brought up that I sounded like I was delivering an apology. He was right. I speak from a position of guilt. I feel guilty if I’m not spending enough time with my son and guilty if I’m not spending enough time building myself. I never feel like I am devoting enough time to either. I never feel like I am good enough at either. The feeling is exhausting, and it never leaves you. As women, we are programmed to think that parenting is supposed to be an experience of martyrdom. People expect us to lose something in order to gain something else. It’s like we can’t dream big if our screensaver features an adorable photo of our child.
 
Last week I was enjoying an evening with my son and friends, and someone made the following comment: “Isn’t he beautiful? You spend so much time working but this is where the meaning of life lives”. The implication was one of abandonment, as if my decision to work somehow implied a lesser commitment to my son. We can pretend to ignore these comments, but on some deep level they leave a mark in our mind’s operating system that impacts our own expectations of what we can and should aspire to. Personal motivation is an incredibly complex thing, strongly influenced by the social expectations and unconscious beliefs we carry with us. Women have historically been taken down a damned by genetics path, but the reality is this: traits that may seem to be biologically hardwired in women are actually embedded in our heads through generations of unconscious behaviors and word choices.

The words we choose reinforce deep assumptions about what is normal and acceptable and what is not. Google “Bernie Sanders ambitious,” and you get headlines about the candidate’s “ambitious plans.” Try it with Donald Trump, and you find references to his “ambitious deportation plan.” But try it with Hillary Clinton, and you’ll find accusations of “unbridled ambition” and “ruthless ambitions.” Ambition is admirable in a man, but unacceptable in a woman. I can’t recall a single instance in the past year where someone asked my husband, “How do you do it all?” Not asking how men do it all implies that they aren’t expected to. These sorts of linguistic distinctions may seem subtle, but an entire structure of assumed responsibility is implicit. Many men are also “doing it all” but society continues to only value what they do in the office. If we leave men out of the conversation, we are not only neglecting to value the work that they are doing outside of the office, we also aren’t emphasizing how difficult the juggle is, and why it is so important for them to be a part of it.

For the record, I don’t think we need to get all ‘Oprah’ about how being a woman is the hardest job in the world. I know that I speak from a position of privilege. I am lucky that I’ve found my calling in startups and entrepreneurship and I am lucky that I’ve found I am good at building products and inspiring teams to achieve great things. I also know meaningful work is not available to everyone. I have full-time help at home during the week. I am not a single mom. In fact, my husband helps out more than most and I am lucky that he supports my work. So no, this is not a rant against men.

But the playing field is not equal. There are tangible inequalities, like the wage gap, which has been well document and can be easily measured (on average, men see a 6% increase in earnings after becoming fathers, while women’s wages decreased 4% for every child). These inequalities get the most attention, justifiably so. But even if every external disadvantage, every inequality of opportunity, every challenge we face balancing work and family is removed, we would still have to deal with the fact that through the beliefs we carry in our mind, like the constant guilt, we are becoming our own worst enemy. Unraveling the unconscious drama that parallels our conscious desire for gender equality starts with acknowledging that the collective assumptions we've embedded in women are flawed.

As for me, the one constant that I have found to be true in this short, beautiful, chaotic, overwhelming, anxiety-ridden, laughter-filled, rewarding, tiring, miraculous first year of motherhood is that I should not apologize or feel guilty for not giving all of myself to any one thing. Because the best thing I can do for my son is to teach him that life doesn’t revolve around a single thing, not even him.

There's so much great stuff out there that should be required reading for founders. Some of the best stuff I've found is linked below. You can read all of these posts in the time it'll take you to watch a bad Adam Sandler movie. So read on! 

An Invocation for Beginnings by Ze Frank – 3 min view
Start Now, No Funding Needed by Derek Sivers – 3 min view
Great Ideas Often Look Like Bad Ideas by Sal Matteis, inspired by this talk given by Chris Dixon – 4 min read
Startup = Growth by Paul Graham – 28 min read
All the Startup Advice You Read is Wrong by Ev Williams – 3 min read
The Buffett Formula – How To Get Smarter by Shane Parrish – 7 min read
Back to School Advice from Henry Rollins – 5 min view
Jim Barksdale and Snakes – 3 min read
The Fine Line Between Fear and Courage by Ben Horowitz – 7 min read
Steve Jobs on Failure – 2 min view
How Not to Die by Paul Graham – 11 min read
Entrepreneurship Is Hard But You Can't Die by Steve Blank – 6 min read
We're Not Crushing It by Elizabeth Yin – 3 min read
Founder Depression by Sam Altman – 2 min read
From Selling Scoops Of Ice Cream To Founding ZeroCater by Arram Sabeti – 12 min read
Caine's Arcade by Nirvan Mullick – 11 min view

I used to struggle with how confident I should be. It requires a certain amount of confidence and naiveté to make it in business. But I've also met cocky founders who miss the things that'll kill them because they think they know everything.

Ben Horowitz offers a more interesting way to look at it - confidence is irrelevant; courage is all that matters. It is courage, the ability to do the right thing regardless of how easy or hard it is to do, or how you feel, that matters.
To steal from the post (worth a read): "Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly."
Also, check out this interview (below) where Ben talks more about courage, the hard things in business, how tough Andy Grove is, and why there are still lots of social problems in tech.

People that know me often describe me as "serious." I would agree with this, to some extent. Taking yourself seriously is good. I know a lot of people who are way too relaxed. Maybe it’s because I’m impatient and I like to execute, ship, and make shit happen.

But sometimes I feel like I'd be better off if I dialed back a bit and took myself less seriously. When you're chill, you don't overthink stuff.  When you don't overthink stuff, you put your ego aside and ship your work even if it's not perfect.

I re-listened to Obama's podcast with Marc Maron the other day - Obama said there's a certain element of "chill" in him, probably as a result of being from Hawaii.

This got me thinking - most people aren’t successful in spite of their being laid back, they’re successful because of it.  

On leaving Apple, Steve Jobs said,  “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” 

Stay curious and experimental. Stay chill. ​