Introducing In Lehmann's Terms
Because the only thing we needed less than another seed fund was another VC blog!
I forget where I first encountered “I don’t know what I think until I write it down”, but it’s lived rent free in my thoughts ever since.1 Thankfully, it’s been a good tenant - keeps the noise down after 10pm, that sort of thing. Writing has since become my go-to for clarifying my thinking both personally and professionally. The history nerd in me rejoices.
I expect to cover two major topics with this blog. The first is demystifying the world of venture capital. I have been a VC for over a decade, with a focus on partnering with founders building infrastructure software companies at the pre-seed and seed stage. That sentence alone has enough jargon that I could write a blog post about it (and I most likely will). I find myself having, not the same conversation, but variations on a theme with founders around:
fundraising (how do you make decisions / how does anyone make decisions? best practices for running a process? should I take money from a stage / sector specialist or a multi-stage firm?)
investor management (how do I get the most from my investor syndicate? how do I deal with a challenging board member? an existing investor says they want to preempt a round - how can I tell if they are serious?)
company building (what should I optimize for with my first hires? when is the right time to hire a director / VP to lead this function?)
strategy (should we invest more in sales & marketing or keep burn low? should we consider M&A? how should we frame the competitive landscape?).
The second is explaining technical concepts in simple language. I often describe the sector I focus on to non-technical friends as: “not the tech that you are using in your browser or on your phone, but all the plumbing behind the scenes that makes that work”. Or, more simply, super nerdy stuff. Neither description really gets much traction at dinner parties! But my hope is that by making these topics more accessible, I can get people curious about what’s going on under the hood. Or at least help them realize that “microservice architecture” is not a style they will come across at an open house. In both cases, I’m hoping to frame the topic in layman’s terms (hence the name of the blog!2), while also sharing my point of view.
The startup world is already awash with exceptional content and I’m not really sure how much I’m going to add to the canon. And to the point I made in the subtitle, there are plenty of hot takes already floating out there from the thinkboi tribe. I’ll add my views where I can and otherwise hyperlink / footnote liberally! My philosophy, I think, is that the exercise will benefit at least two people each time: me, and the person who asked me whatever question I am writing about. If it ends up helping anyone beyond that, awesome.
If you’re still here, thank you for reading and making it this far! Please feel free to get in touch with potential topics for future issues. Consider it a forum that melds Silicon Valley with The Economist with an agony aunt. And, for now, we will pretend that I am doing a better job than an LLM would.
-Will
As best as I can tell, the quote is attributable to either Joan Didion or Flannery O’Connor in various forms.
My last name is pronounced “lay-man” not “lee-man”, to the chagrin of those making Lehman Brothers jokes.