Never invest in something you like.
Once upon a time in the kingdom over the ocean, a scary dragon told me his secret: “I never invest in anything I actually like”, he confided.
How joyless, I thought.
Then I co-ventured a company to launch a range of delicious dips that I adored, just to prove him wrong.
The recipes were mouthwatering. I was smitten. We launched in Selfridges, won great press, landed national distribution. Everyone loved our in-store tastings and the award-winning branding and packaging that the Mystery team had designed. Our founding princess had a flawless blue-chip resumé to go with her incredible dips, a natural talent for selling and impeccable taste.
It was the ideal first chapter for a start-up story. But as in all good tales, events took a turn for the worse. As the plot began to thicken, and cracks began to show, a gap seemed to open between blue chip polish and our bootstrapped reality.
Like most dragons, we are often impressed by the dazzling Kingdom of Big-Brand, but it's always wise to remember that it's not the same as Startup-Land.
In BigBrand Kingdom the quest is optimization, there is treasure in the vault and the risk is not your own. You work with big numbers so the scale of rewards can be boggling.
In StartUpLand, the quest is to make something from nothing, there are small budgets to navigate, no safety nets to catch you, and getting up every time after being knocked over is as critical as finding a new path through the forrest.
When our founder found the ground in our story, she was rescued up by a shinier opportunity that rode in on horseback. The tale ended earlier than we had hoped. No evil villains. Not exactly a fairytale ending either, but a story with a useful moral:
• The scary dragon actually had a point! Liking the product is a bias, not a thesis - so do more diligence.
• Pedigree does not equal resilience.
• Mind the gap between being able to optimize and being able to improvise.
No one would call me the sharpest sword in the armory, but I’ve fought a few battles and each scar tells a story, so I’m grateful for this experience. It taught me to separate product love from investment logic, and not to choose partners for their status.
To be clear, I’ve worked with ex-big-company founders who absolutely have the startup gene. They absolutely exist. Perhaps they’re just a little rarer than we like to imagine.
If you’re weighing up a brand investment - or hiring for an early-stage team - and would like to hear some more bedtime stories, don’t hesitate to reach out.
And we can all invest a little wiser, ever after.
Dan Einzig