Investor vs Investor Hating

One thing that I have noticed in the world of venture capital is "investor hating." Investor hating is when one group of investors has a natural inclination to disenfranchise another investor. Admittedly, I have also been a perpetrator of this behavior.

Symptoms of investor hating include measuring other investors' track records, their ability to raise capital, or calling out deals they may have done that you might think are not going to be winners. Another great example is one investor that mentions how much more value they bring to founders than another investor. As someone who has been down the road of personally assassinating everyone in my head and not feeling the greatest about it, I have decided to stop this behavior.

The truth is that in early-stage investing- there are over one hundred different types of thesis, themes, and strategies a person could follow. All of them can lead to failure and success. So there is no monopoly on the rule book on being a great investor. Instead, you have to figure out what is suitable for you and be open to different ideas that might challenge your own.

The path to opening my perspective to others is by reading Adam Scott's book Think Again. Its premise is that one's intelligence is not the culmination of what one knows but their desire to undo one's thinking.