Is it dark inside me?
I got a very cool card from the team at Pentagram with a bunch of questions from their children. One of them was, “Is it dark inside me?”
I got a very cool card from the team at Pentagram with a bunch of questions from their children. One of them was, “Is it dark inside me?”
When asked by a 5 year old child, I think it’s cute. But, If asked by a middle aged man, I think this question is scary.
The words are the same, but the assumptions I make create different meanings. I would engage the curious child. I would run away from the troubled middle aged man.
In this example, it is obvious that 80% of the meaning comes from me and not from the person asking the question. But, it has me thinking about the meaning I take away from conversations with founders and how much is based on what I bring to the conversation and how much is based on what the founder actually said.
If 80% of what I take away from an interview is built on the assumptions and biases I bring into the meeting in the first place, it’s really hard to learn anything new. In preparation for meetings, I have always made a list of questions that will help me make an investment decision — basically a search for areas of the business that I don’t understand. But this guides the conversation away from my assumptions — lets them sit unchallenged by the founder and increases the impact of my biases on my decisions.
Because it’s easier to recognize biases and assumptions than to change them — I am practicing some self discovery. Now, I am also making a list of my assumptions about the business and the founder. I am mindful of areas I think I know really well and rather than skipping over this stuff, I include these areas in the conversation by explicitly stating assumptions and highlighting bias based on past experience. In doing this, I am trying to shine a light on the assumptions and learn where they are shared with the founder and where they are challenged — and make it a little less dark inside me.
It is early, but I assume I will see familiar patterns in my thinking. My hypothesis is I will be way more effective in processing the information from each interview as I get to know myself better. If I can identify the 80% of the conversation that I brought to the table and filter it out of my analysis, I’ll get a lot better at understanding founders and their companies — and hope to make better investment decisions.