Over the last 3 weeks I've been on endless calls and visits with people far smarter and more experienced than me, yet kind enough to spare their time and share invaluable advice. For this, I feel blessed.
The hard part is in knowing what to ask. There are so many questions in my head. Where to even begin. The harder part is finding the right moment to pop the first question. So here's the learnings:

1. Warm the seat Be early. It's ok to wait a short while. This helps in giving me the time to collect my thoughts, go thru the possible questions to ask, especially the all-important first question.
2. Warm the conversation You don't really want to start the conversation peppering the person with questions, yet you don't want to waste too much of your audience's time with frivolous conversation. I find the best way to warm the dialogue is to genuinely greet the person, and if he/she has something to say, allow the person the space and time to reply.
3. Warm the session Keep the momentum of your ask. Best not to ask haphazardly. Keep the flow with relational questions, and if you're being asked a counter, give short but succinct answer.
4. Time awareness Since your meet up is scheduled, be mindful of your audience's time. You want to ask as many questions but time is always limited. Ask the most relevant questions, and always check on time of your audience.
5. Cool it on defense No need to be defensive of your idea's hypotheses, after all, you're on a fact-finding mission, a research. Best to absorb the salient points given, and if that go against the grain, clarify the pov given.
6. Buffering Always allow minimum of 15 minutes from one ending meet to the start of another. If the session ends early, you'll have time to collect your thoughts, if it doesn't, then you have extra 15 mins to wrap it up. Pro tip: the person you're meeting next should at least be on cordial term with your present meet.
7. Order humble pie Be attentive, be inquisitive, be positive, when you're getting comments. There's no right or wrong, just understanding. Never be shy to ask, even if you feel it may sound foolish.

At one of the meet ups, one of the feedbacks I got was that I might not have fully comprehend what it takes for the idea to work. The natural instinct was to reply and defend, but I didn't. I thought about why this was the comment. It came down to either I didn't articulate concisely enough to the person or I really didn't ready myself. Either way, it got me thinking, and that's all I could hope for; to be able to ponder new thoughts.
I'm grateful to have friends who were willing to help a no-longer young 'founder'. The journey in de-rusting continues on.

De-rusting Day 4

As I continue speaking to OGs of the industry, team is by far the most asked question amongst many others. This got me to recall a thought I had shared with some VC friends a while back.

Do we expect founders to last the journey? You know, the iconic figurehead of the company. Intrincsically, founders are dreamers, not builders. Of course, founders need the skillset to build, otherwise the dream wouldn't come to fruition. To what level would they be expected to continue building? Invariably, the operational aspects of the business may just dull the instinctual habits of a dreamer.

How then do we remain and become the best version of being founders? I believe that in the process of starting and building your company, succession plan has to be considered as part of the build. Only very few founders remain from start to finish. Often times, the 'succession' plan is due to unwanted situations. You don't want that. Founders shouldn't crave for titles or positions, as if a loss of that title diminishes the great work they're doing.

I recall having an in-depth conversation with my partner at Touchstone, Tu Ngo, where at Yola, they rotated the roles of the c-suite, even when it was a senior hire, it took the time to train and move this hire to the CEO position.

Why this is important? You build a moat by creating reliability of your leadership team, consistently having the best people at the point of the where the business is. There is actually a plan for it. This is what I admire about Yola.

We all have our limitations. We can possibly do the best in what we know to be our strengths, the rest you can only try by learning as much as you can. When you recognize your limitations, and work to removing that 'glass ceiling', the better you become. Your business at 10 people is different when it's 100, and it's different again when it's 1,000. If you're not the best person at any of this juncture, find the best. ​

While giving a refresh on the website, I re-read the post. To put into context, it was written prior to major lockdowns in Vietnam and Singapore. Particularly the last paragraph, "...and when you look out, the air may be fresher, and the colors brighter."
Well, if we recall, after a couple months of lockdown, the air did get much fresher and clearer, and the colors much more radiant. 
I remembered thinking and expressing, that mother nature does take care of our planet rather well. That just with a couple of months of non-industrial activities, the pollution index went down to mere high single to low double-digits. 
Alas, we're perhaps back to pre-pandemic levels of pollution with resultant smoggy air. When will we ever learn? Even the best efforts of greening initiatives would take decades to equalize the cleaning of environment. 
Here's a thought; random thought, I might add. What if we regulate production of anything to 10 months, and total production reduce to 80%, maybe over a period of 24 months. When a sizable percentage of produced items end up in landfills, could we reduce even further? 
Do we even need so much things in our lives?
I know this sounds downright naive, to think that it could ever be. But the critical fact is, it needs to be. 
Did we even consider, and the 'we' as in, relevant authorities around the world, that a reboot and a deeper examination of our living habits is sorely wanting. The future generation will look to this period in history and conclude that we didn't learn much, and that we missed the biggest part of the lessons given to us. 
Here's the irony. I heard that Shein is looking for someone to look into the environmental impact of its business. Well, how about reducing production by 30%? Again, another random thought. 
​So much for my Sunday. See you in another couple years...NOT. 

Just concluded another session on Crucial Talking Points. At this session, I had 3 of my good friends and VCs sharing their thoughts on navigating through this crisis. Special thanks to Michael Lints of Golden Gate Ventures, Saikit Ng of Captii Ventures, and Justin Nguyen of Monk's Hill Ventures. 
​Many great points and tips were made and given. The conclusion was, keep doing what you're doing, but do it in smarter ways. 
Please click the link to the video, as the file is too big to be posted here. Do come back and comment and let me know what you think. 

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