Month: May 2019

Announcing Two Small Fish Ventures Fund II

Earlier today Eva announced on Two Small Fish Ventures’ blog that she has raised $9 million in the first close of TSFV’s Fund II. It is exciting to see her transformation from an entrepreneur to an angel investor and now a VC.

TSFV’s investment thesis remains the same. Fund II will continue to invest globally in early-stage tech companies with strong network effects. The goal is to help nurture them into global tech giants. She has made investments from the new fund already, including Printify and several more about to close.

There is no doubt Canada’s tech ecosystem is thriving. Access to capital is no longer the biggest roadblock for startup successes as we now have a lot of great investors in Canada. That being said, there is still one big gap in the Canadian venture capital ecosystem: very few venture funds are actually co-founded by internet entrepreneurs and product creators who have massive successes. In contrast, in Silicon Valley, there are numerous successful internet entrepreneurs turned VCs. They can recycle their experience and knowledge of building and scaling a product to reach millions of users. This is exactly what we would like to do and why TSFV is special: we will recycle our unique knowledge in building and scaling internet-scale companies to help other entrepreneurs to be successful.

It is also worth noting that TSFV is not just providing capital. Through Creator Circle, a group of successful entrepreneurs and product creators who are investors in Fund II, we are providing a mini ecosystem of like-minded, entrepreneurial people who are also recycling their invaluable expertise to help TSFV portfolio companies achieve escape velocity. When TSFV invests in a company, all these creators are part of the team because the success of the company directly affects their investment. They have skin in the game.

Expect more announcements in the coming months as the final target for Fund II is $15 million. There will also be more investment announcements as TSFV can now write more cheques (and bigger cheques!) with follow on investments too.

P.S. You can read Eva’s announcement here.

How to make meetings suck less

About a year ago I read an article about Jeff Bezos’ approach to meetings at Amazon that really resonated with me. Specifically, there were three things that make meetings more effective and efficient that really stood out to me.

  1. The Two-Pizza Team Rule – According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon tries to “create teams that are no larger than can be fed by two pizzas”
  2. No PowerPoint – “No PowerPoints are used inside of Amazon,” Bezos proudly declares. “Somebody for the meeting has prepared a six-page…narratively structured memo. It has real sentences, and topic sentences, and verbs, and nouns–it’s not just bullet points.”
  3. Start with Silence – “We read those memos, silently, during the meeting,” says Bezos. “It’s like a study hall. Everybody sits around the table, and we read silently, for usually about half an hour, however long it takes us to read the document. And then we discuss it.”

Like Bezos, I’m a big believer in small group meetings. Based on my experience, it’s too difficult to have a conversation that’s relevant to most if there are more than eight people in the room.

I don’t necessarily 100% agree with no PowerPoint, though. Yes, there are times when having a narrative works better, but in some cases, bullet points can be more effective. One can’t replace the other. Use the right tool at the right time for the right people.

What I found really interesting is the study hall format. Since learning about, I’ve tried it out in multiple meetings by allocating the first 5-10 minutes (not 30 minutes as Bezos suggests) so everyone can go through the document or deck and add their questions and comments in advance of the discussion. Here’s what I observed:

The Pros

  • It ensures everyone has read the materials and the context is fresh in people’s mind (and yes, I know meeting organizers can always send materials in advance as pre-reading, but people still have to carve out time in their schedule to get it done. This is especially difficult for people who attend lots of back-to-back meetings).
  • It provides dedicated time for pre-reading that is already built into the meeting (similar to the point above)
  • It helps reduce the amount of context switching so the quality of the conversation goes up noticeably because the context is so fresh in everyone’s mind.
  • The quality of the questions improves because people don’t have to multi-task in the meeting, i.e. listen, read, absorb AND ask at the same time.

The Cons

  • It means less time to talk, especially when meetings are only 30 minutes long (but IMO, we get this time back in a way because we might have wasted those 5-10 minutes getting attendees up to speed anyway).

As you can tell, I become a fan of the study hall format, and while I recognize it doesn’t work for every type of meeting, it’s helpful when teams need to be on the same page with specific background information. That’s when spending 5-10 minutes to make sure everyone is “in the zone” is well worth it.

Incorporating the Study Hall format to your next meeting gives you time: Time for understanding; Time for extended reflection; Time for focused thinking; All of which leads to better and more effective meetings.

Attitude > Skill

The Wattpad team is growing and we’re hiring for many roles. Recently, the team was in the position of having to choose between two highly qualified candidates for a single role (a great problem to have). One applicant had more experience or skill but the other one had a better attitude.

So who did we pick? Well here’s what I told the team:

“All things equal, always choose attitude over skill and experience. Skills can be learned, but it is hard to change one’s attitude.”

Of course, all candidates need to meet certain skill-based criteria, whatever that may be. It’s hard to hire someone in finance if ‘spreadsheet’ is an unfamiliar term. It doesn’t make sense to hire an engineer who has never written a line of code before. These are somewhat facetious examples and IRL the bar would be set much, much higher, but you get the point.

Hiring a person who may be less experienced but possess the right attitude can be a worthwhile investment and a risk worth taking if you believe you can get the candidate 80% up to speed in 3 months and 100% up to speed in 6 months.

With the right attitude one can overcome any obstacles, but when people have the wrong attitude, getting them to fit into the company can be mission impossible because of the inevitable cultural clashes and teamwork disruption. It can drag down the performance of the entire team. People with positive attitudes can solve problems proactively rather than reactively. While it’s hard to quantify, they can greatly increase business velocity and team performance.

Choosing attitude over skill is a guiding principle that I have been using for many years and has served me really well!

The next time a candidate walks through your door and doesn’t exactly have the right skills or experience, ask yourself if they have the right attitude.