The best way to be helpful is to find revenue for your portfolio companies. Nothing is more helpful than proactive introductions to potential customers. That sort of help dwarfs almost any other type of help. I remember at Bowery, General Catalyst connected us to Doug McMillon (the CEO of Walmart) without us asking for it. We had received some great press recently and they took it upon themselves to do it. It was absolutely transformational to our business. This is obviously an extreme example, but GC could have done nothing else in their entire history with the company and it still would have been worth it to have them on the board for that reason alone. All of this sounds obvious, but it’s worth restating because it sometimes feels too straightforward to be true.

On a separate note, one of the weird dynamics that I think all people fall prey to that exists in the vc founder dynamic is that founders often feel that they need to live up to the original vision they promised the vc, and just try to make the original thing work. Psychologically no one wants to feel like they are breaking a promise, or not good on their word. They spoke so passionately about their original vision, and now they’re changing? There is real cognitive dissonance in changing one’s mind, and it’s really strong in this type of situation. And it’s not really anyone’s fault. It’s just human nature. One of the subtle ways that VCs add to this dynamic with pre PMF companies is that they ask about lagging indicators rather than leading indicators. Revenue, pipeline, etc, but they don’t take a strong interest in really teasing out how a customer is using a product. How are they liking it? What’s the value prop. How do you know they love it? Asking those questions actually more directly indicates that you’re looking to figure out if a direction is working or not, rather than hammering at one bc it was the original vision. It’s subtle and requires a delicate balance because sometimes you actually do need to just hammer away at a singular vision, but it’s worth always being cognizant of this dynamic.