Here we are, in the end times. (It’s called late-stage capitalism for a reason. What comes after late-stage anything? A complete – and completely unexpected – re-birth of the incumbent paradigm.)

The beauty of these times is that we get to re-invent every single aspect of our system – including, first and foremost, ourselves.

Here’s how we are NOT going to create a values-aligned culture in our startups and investment portfolios:

• Requiring impact metrics, of any kind. We choose our portco’s based on actual thesis alignment: are they creating a product or service that can be a lever for industry transformation and impact humanity at a large scale? If so, they are aligned. The impact is baked, weaved, and utterly ingrained in the product (and processes.) The founder’s life calling is to execute on it. This, understandably, weeds out 99% of startups. (Note: Impact metrics aren’t bad, they can be useful, it’s just that you don’t force it on them.)
  

• Requiring founders (or employees) to do meditation daily. Would we love if founders meditated daily, and brought that stable, calm foundation of leadership to their team culture? For sure! But, meditation isn’t for everyone, and anything can be commoditized. For us, it’s not about external performative metrics of “values”, it’s about living in integrity. This means doing what is in the highest alignment for yourself, your venture, and your industry, in that order – and being transparent and truthful with everyone, including yourself. (This is harder than meditating. :))
  

• Blindly following the “rules” that seem to be the status quo in our industries. Venture capital, the way it’s done today, is very effective in some ways. In other ways, not as much. For example, an exit for a startup (buy out or IPO) seems to be the only way to cash in on your investment returns. But if these founders don’t want to fuel more centralization of capital in our system, where they are swallowed up by corporations, and the corporations are all ultimately controlled by their primary shareholders (e.g. Blackrock), are there other ways to get back returns? Of course! We ourselves created the venture capital system, and we can change it if we want to. We can extend the time the venture has to IPO, and traditional private equity has many other diverse options, like equity buy back, dividends, revenue share, secondaries ... and more are being created everyday (e.g. Daos...) The main thing is that the venture is successful, that we stay true to what is right and good for the company, and that we create liquidity somehow.

Here’s some more ways we DO create a values-aligned culture in our startups and investment portfolios:

• Having a set process for due diligence (or hiring) that rigorously tests emotional intelligence, and other factors that are aliases for how aligned the founder is to his/her stated vision and mission, as well as his/her ability to stay anchored in that well past seed stage. (Fun fact: lying or exaggerating about your venture metrics during this phase is not favorable to you.)
• Having a coaching or leadership development plan for founders post-investment that supports them to self-reflect and implement company-level systems to create high quality results from a happy, stable team (which means risk mitigation for investors!)
• Creating a culture of trust and service. We operate with full trust and transparency with our people, but/and we also protect our boundaries like a razor blade.

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