Episode 136: Founder First, Team Second (Here’s Why) | Story Snacks Series

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Most founders lead with the team because they’re trying not to sound egotistical.

But allocators aren’t sitting there thinking, “Wow, great org chart.” They’re thinking: “Do I understand this firm yet?”

In this episode, Stacy breaks down what allocators actually want in the first meeting and why you’re better off leading with a crisp origin story (even if the founder isn’t in the room to tell it).

Listen in to learn: 

• How to tell the founder story without it sounding like “me, me, me”
  

• What to do when you’re not the founder (or the founder isn’t there)
  

• How co-founders/co-managers can stay aligned on one clear version of the story
  

• Where to place team so it builds trust instead of overwhelming the opener

TRANSCRIPT

Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Craving more knowledge, but don't always have time to sit down for a five course meal. Take a quick snack break with story snacks, bite-size content to feed your funnel. Each short episode features Stacey, digging into one question. This series has her talking stories, sales, and so much more.

[00:00:18] Oh yeah, it's time for story snacks.

[00:00:27] So how do I strike the right balance between. My personal credibility and highlighting what the whole team has accomplished, what's the mix allocators actually want? So I'm going to assume, assuming is always bad when I'm going to, that this is a situation in which we have maybe multiple fund managers.

[00:00:49] Like we have co-managers as opposed to just one fund manager. And that can be challenging. We have clients where it's co-founders, so the [00:01:00] first thing is. Again, this goes back to another question we've done in story snacks, which is about the story itself. Like what I'm telling, the backstory, the origin story, the founding story of the firm.

[00:01:14] Should I have different versions? And the answer is no. There should be one source of truth on the backstory of the firm, the founder, the origin story. Everybody can sort of jazz it with their own twist, but there should be like three to five points that everybody is on the same page and communicating.

[00:01:35] So if you are not the founder or you are one of the founders and you're telling that story, it's obviously gonna look a little different than if it's the founder telling the story about themselves, right? Doesn't matter. I think this is one of the hardest. Most difficult things that we have to confront, which is we are in the [00:02:00] meeting and we're gonna tell the story the way the founder would tell the story the way we've all worked on, even if the founder isn't there.

[00:02:08] First of all, we do not have to justify our existence by trying to say, and here's who I am and here's why you should care, and here's all the bullet points on my resume as well. Right? You don't have to do that. So if it's co-founders, though, again, when that story is crafted, it should be a co-founder story.

[00:02:31] So it is going to reflect the two people who came together to start this firm. If you are one of them, then after you tell the founding story, you could then have a little bit that you lean into on yourself tiny bit if you'd like. I also don't know that that's super necessary. I think this is so interesting because it's actually, I have seen fund managers struggle with [00:03:00] this, even if it's a solo fund manager, but there's an investment team because it feels like braggy and sort of egotistical.

[00:03:10] 'cause you're like, and me, me, me, me, me and I started this firm and here's where I was before and blah, blah blah. And oh yeah, I have an investment team. I get why that feels strange, but I've also been in meetings where somebody feels uncomfortable with that and they really wanna talk about like, what?

[00:03:27] What makes us special is our people. And let me now go through the bios of every single person on the firm, and that's often too much, too soon. They're great. Your people are great, of course they're because you hired them and at some point maybe we wanna talk more about that, but not right now because I'm just meeting you and I'm trying to understand if I even care to find out about the rest of the people on the team.

[00:03:50] So we kind of need to start in the beginning. So I think it's delicate. To me, this question can come from one of two places. [00:04:00] Either we feel uncomfortable with the fact that it's our story. We want to highlight the people on the team for many reasons. Due diligence reasons, the whole, like, someone's gonna get hit by a bus, what happens then?

[00:04:16] Reasons. So it could be that, but it also can come from a place of. Feeling that we need to justify our existence if we're not the founder or if we're not sort of the primary face forward person. And we don't have to do that. We don't have to take this detour into like, and here's why you should listen to me because I also am pretty cool, like, and let me tell you why we don't need to do that.

[00:04:47] I think. In some ways it goes back to the previous snack that we did, which is like there is a story on how the firm started. That is the story you wanna tell now when you get [00:05:00] farther along in due diligence and you're talking about process, that's a great place to talk about team. And this is how the process works, and there are five of us on the team and we're all specialists and here's how the coverage breaks down.

[00:05:14] Or we're all generalists and we meet once a week or whatever. Like that's a great place to kind of dive more into the team. But I think it gets weird when it's at the beginning. Parts of the conversation and we're, we're sort of camped out on all the other people or ourselves because we're not in the, the origin story and we feel we need to insert ourselves so we have relevance.

[00:05:36] We don't need to do that. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance.

[00:05:58] All opinions expressed by guests on [00:06:00] the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Haven or Haven, or Capital Partners

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