jack mcclelland
jack mcclelland
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writing
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other topics to write about

other topics to write about

  • starting a school
  • parallels between recruiting and venture
  • apply “you and your research” to founding a company
  • relentlessness / reactivity
  • temporary arbitrages into bigger opportunities
  • breaking into vc
  • optimizing for inputs vs optimizing for outputs
  • peter fenton quote about faith / life of pi quote too
  • perception by coworkers
  • getting in your own head about investing
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fake narratives in sv
  • founder-market fit
  • success narrative defined after success
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add to prev writing
  • anti-portfolio, coverage, "missing" a deal
  • cracking coding, pm, vc, now founder
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ownership versus partnership model at vc funds
  • no one has the perfect model
  • incentive structures
  • culture is what you "can't" do
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aligning around definitions / shared language
  • commercial
  • aggression
  • serious
  • taste
  • growth mindset
  • stories as a unit of truth
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coaching
  • move fast, but maintain minimal pressure
  • good ideas / products take a while
  • ambitious people liked to be pushed
  • imagine you had $5m / had to 10x growth
  • but optimize for the "right" metric
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thoughts on health
  • pareto principle, nail the basics
  • longevity influencers aren't cringe, but they sell quick fixes
  • most effort into cancer (covid vaccine) + moonshots (longevity)
  • people like knowing (metrics - oura) but not action (behavior change)
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weird blurry lines in venture
  • theory that venture makes you more judgmental
  • when people send deals to your boss, not you
  • trying to get money into friends if they’re not raising
  • getting "credit" for a follow-on investor intro
  • getting deals "across the line" as a young person
  • prospecting as a metaphor for idea-generation
  • questions to ask for authentic conversations
  • competency in everything
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what does a "serious" founder mean
  • can talk at length about something
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report on successful founder backgrounds
  • public / private company
  • college, high school, state, age at founding
  • founder primary industry, then secondaries
  • pedigreed or not
  • tech background or not
  • first startup or not
  • leading indicators analysis (ai = more solo founders, etc)
  • personal branding in tech
  • competition