{"id":29355,"date":"2015-04-21T15:15:27","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T13:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=29355"},"modified":"2019-04-29T15:41:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T13:41:11","slug":"rudevc-uninformed-solicitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2015\/04\/rudevc-uninformed-solicitations\/","title":{"rendered":"I have not invested a second reading about you. Now can you give me an hour of your time?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Robert Shrimsley&#8217;s column in the FT this past weekend with advice for journalism job seekers (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/11e83a1e-e3ac-11e4-9a82-00144feab7de.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dear millennials: a few interview tips\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.<\/a>) resonated with me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Shrimsley laments how every Spring he witnesses newly-minted journalism graduates aspiring to work at the Financial Times who seem to have so much to offer &#8212; degrees from elite universities, a hatful of internships, and impressive life experiences &#8212; let themselves down by not having bothered to read a recent FT newspaper in advance of the interview.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We see this a lot in venture capital too: Job seekers ping me at random for employment or career advice without reading about my areas of expertise or passions. I recall job candidates flushing with embarrassment when I asked them an open question to tell me what they liked about any of our investments (anything at all).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But it&#8217;s not just job seekers. Entrepreneurs (or worse, fundraisers) send pitch decks indiscriminately without even glancing at my investment interests, which a simple Google search on &#8220;mark bivens&#8221; brings up (ignore the links about the guy that got arrested, that&#8217;s a different mark bivens. really.). I try to explain clearly and prominently on my blog what my investment <a href=\"http:\/\/rude.vc\/QtQP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sweet spots<\/a> are and how best to <a href=\"http:\/\/rude.vc\/alAx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">capture my attention<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Okay, I admit that Truffle&#8217;s website is uninspiring even by Web 1.0 standards, yet it does make it clear who specializes in which sectors, as well as the 50+ companies in which we&#8217;ve invested.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A reputable investment bank recently emailed me a detailed fundraising memo for their client who happened to be a direct competitor of one of our portfolio companies. Before reviewing the document, I politely inquired whether they realized the risk of conflict, upon which the bank sheepishly asked me to delete the file (for which I gladly obliged).<br \/>\nContrast these behaviors with the following unsolicited emails that I&#8217;ve received in the past few weeks alone:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em> Hi Mark &#8211; I love your blog articles and I wonder if you have some spare time to share some of your advice over lunch or coffee? Perhaps I can be of help as well somehow?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Dear Mark &#8211; I noticed that you invested in BoosterMedia. I believe I might have a lot to offer this company and would be really grateful if you could take a look at my CV&#8230;<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Hi Mark &#8211; I saw your most recent article on Japan investing. Really fantastic article&#8230; If you ever have time, let&#8217;s meet.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I love receiving solicitations like the above. These are individuals who clearly took a bit of time to understand my point of view on something, and in light of that, deemed it would be valuable to get to know each other. They have pre-qualified themselves with me. It&#8217;s a no-brainer for me to defer to their judgment to carve out time for at least a meeting.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It really makes such basic common sense, doesn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/markbivens.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_keys.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2866\" src=\"http:\/\/markbivens.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/blog_keys.jpg\" alt=\"blog_keys\" width=\"801\" height=\"534\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert Shrimsley&#8217;s column in the FT this past weekend with advice for journalism job seekers (Dear millennials: a few interview tips\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.) resonated with me. Shrimsley laments how every Spring he witnesses newly-minted journalism graduates aspiring to work at the Financial Times who seem to have so much to offer &#8212; degrees from elite universities, a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":29356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[7236],"class_list":["post-29355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance","tag-rudevc-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}