For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
​
One learning, reminder, or interesting item from my week.
One interesting find/tool from my week.
One image from my life.

Let's dive in 👇

Learning/reminder of the week

Getting to clarity.

An investment opportunity came across my desk this week that is much riskier than what I typically consider putting time and money into.

The decision to invest has been one I've been contemplating all week. My decision making framework has consisted of many of the usual steps of meeting the founder, spending time with the leadership team, understanding the market opportunity, and ultimately getting to a solid pros and cons list for the investment.

But after all of this diligence, I was still up at night thinking about my pending decision and all the factors contributing to it. My simple pros and cons list obviously wasn't working. Time to add a step.

I added a third column to my elementary pros and cons chart and labeled it "getting to clarity".

I then wrote down everything that would give me greater confidence in the decision. This included completing tasks and asking myself questions like:

• Speak to connections that have experience in the industry (I interned for a founder 13 years ago that had a similar business model and exited his business)
• Ask yourself better questions such as "how would I feel if I never see this money again?" and "what additional benefits can come from investing and supporting this team?"
• Meet with the leading investor of the round
• I know a CEO that is a current client of the business. Ask about his experience
• Look at the funding and exit patterns of similar businesses

I've gone through half of these tasks and already feeling a lot better about the decision.

Note to self: Add the "getting to clarity step" for future large decisions.

What was the business and what was my decision? I'll save that for a future 1x1x1.

Interesting find/tool of the week

I needed to write some code for three financial calculators to be used as lead gen tools for a client's business that we're growing.

The logic for these calculators is pretty complex. Typically I'd hire a dev team to build these out but lucky for me, Chat GPT wrote all of the code for me, nailed the logic, and gave me the needed HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

Dev team - 0 Chat GPT - 1

Image from my life

I don't watch a lot of sports but I watch and follow free ride mountain biking religiously. I definitely fan boyed pretty hard when I bumped into my all time favorite rider Brett Rheeder on the trail behind my house this week.

Most of you won't know him so take 2 minutes out of your day and watch this. I promise its worth it!

See you all next week!