On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Ethan Austin of Outside VC
- Willy Schlacks of EquipmentShare
- Grant Demaree of Onebrief
We asked guests for the most important piece of advice that they’d share with folks early in their venture career.
The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area.
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Want to keep up to date with The Full Ratchet? Follow us on social. You can learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our LinkedIn and Twitter.
Transcribed with AI:
0:19
Welcome back to TFR. On today’s special segment, we ask guests for the most important piece of advice that they’d share with folks early in their venture career. Here’s the segment called Key Advice. On today’s special segment, we have Ethan Austin of Outside VC. If you could share one piece of advice with a young new investor, what would you tell them? I
0:44
think it’s fine you’re swimming. I think there’s so many firms out there today, and there’s 3000 venture capital firms out there, is why is someone going to choose you? And I think unless you can find a reason why a founder is going to choose you, it’s really hard, and I think we tend to think that it’s about picking the companies, and I think it’s really about the companies picking you.
1:08
On today’s special segment, we have Willie Shalax from Equipment Chair. Willie, if you could share one piece of advice with a young new founder, what would you tell them?
1:15
I probably reinforced what I was saying before. It’s that stop and meet yourself approach, ask the questions, let yourself not have answers, be really okay with just the person who doesn’t have to have be right, because when you’re right, it simply means that your brain doesn’t learn anything, because the brain, just everything that’s right in your brain, just trucks it out, goes, we don’t need to remember that, we already know it, so the only way your brain really is enhanced and evolves and expands, and when you’re wrong, and even the word wrong has a poor impression in our language, and it shouldn’t like the misalignment of I thought it was this, but it was that, should be a celebration, not a shit, I was wrong, so lean into that celebration when you, when you go, I thought it was something, but it wasn’t, like, boom, you just, that’s the goldmine.
2:01
How does, how does the founder or the leader help their employees and help their peers in others that are on the journey, you know, evolve and be open and take that ride as well. A
2:13
lot of people probably have a lot more insights and better answers than I would, but I think based on my observation and the things that inspire me, it is when I observe somebody living and they don’t bother being observed, like there’s no intention behind their living as far as wanting to be observed or thinking that somehow special, but watching the raw reality of a human live is it’s emotional, it’s inspiring, it’s like that’s what I want to be, so I would, I would say that instead of feeling like you have to manufacture your behaviors or be a certain thing, like the more you live that thoughtless expression, that’s probably not the right word, because that could be so misunderstood, but you get what I’m saying. As far as you know, there isn’t, there isn’t the facade up, it’s yeah, exactly, the authentic, and everyone knows it when they encounter it, so then it’s inspiring to be that, and you get that when you start letting go at the end of the day, how your your employees and people around you live and act and think, not in your control, not probably not your responsibility either. Absolutely within your influence. So you are highly influential. Anybody just, we are far more influential than we realize. The zone of influence happens when we stop trying to be
3:29
Grant Emery joins us today from the Bay Area. He’s the CEO and founder of One Brief, the defense company building the operating system for military planning. If you could share one piece of advice with a new founder, what would you tell them?
3:42
For all advice, I need to start with my caveats, because caveats are actually really important. Advice is a really, really dangerous thing. You should be really careful listening to it, because, like, the industry has changed so fast that the things that made someone successful when I did it, which was like super recent, but the world moved pretty fast. I’ve already changed enough that, like, my lessons might not be valid, and you’re gonna have to find your own path anyway. Within that caveat, like, it’s.. it’s really helped me a lot to love the game. By love the game, I mean that I really, really like trying to build the company, trying to solve this overall problem of making the future of command good, I like to wake up and really, really want to do this, and I think everybody knows that about me at this point, like no one’s like, hey, like I think he’s looking for, for a way to not to not do this, and I think that makes it a lot easier to show up to the team, to the customer, to the investor, to your own family, and be like, “Hey, I like doing this the way Koby liked basketball when he wrote his poem. You should read the poem, by the way. It’s so bad. Having the same attitude about the startup as he had about basketball, like really love the game. Not in a this is like a silly thing, this is something that I can act hazardly about, or I can ignore my responsibility to the customer, to the investor, or to the people, but in a like it’s a huge privilege to get to do this, and if we ever want to stop doing it, it’s not that hard, because a lot of people who really, really want to really like this. I’m really glad that I get to. I wanted to come to work today, and I think that if you are going to be a founder, choosing problem to solve and choosing people to work with, where you can say that very earnestly, and where it’s not true, like figuring out why, and seeing if you can fix the reason it’s not true. I think that’s going to serve you really well. If you don’t win, that’s going to serve you extra well, because, like, most people aren’t. The odds are just so terrible in this industry, and like, if you really love the game, I think that’s going to be a lot better of an outcome, you
6:03
That will conclude this installment of Investor Stories. If you’re enjoying the program and would like to see it continue, take a moment and leave a five-star review in iTunes. Okay, that will wrap things up for today. Until next time, over prepare, choose carefully, and invest confidently. Thanks for joining me.
