last updated: 30 April 2021 this guide is republished from an internal document that was hitherto visible only to 27V team members and portfolio founders.
Principles
Run to keep sane
Always curious, always learning
True measure of success is how helpful one is and one’s relationships
Work schedule
- I work from home, on my own flexible time 🤷♂️
- On my desk 7am-8pm HKT most days; other than a long-ish lunch break when I relax by watching TV 📺 or drumming 🥁
Comms
- Over-communicate! I find working remotely can be quite isolating so I tend to email/message/talk to people a lot.
- I believe asking tons of questions ❓ is the mark of someone who’s actively learning, so ask away.
- Quick acknowledgement (even a simple emoji 👍) goes a long way with me.
- Prefer not to use IM apps for work, to the exclusion of Slack #️⃣.
- The reason Slack makes the cut is that it enables siloed work conversations. Never use WhatsApp or Messenger for work conversations – they’re reserved for personal uses. (ofc if you’re a portfolio founder, you do have my phone number and are welcome to call me any time!)
- For all comms with people outside the team (which is 27V + Portfolio), I use email. I’m very responsive on email 📥, try me.
Meetings
- I’m a power user of Calendly 📆 and have different links for differently meeting lengths; 95% probability I’ll send you one to schedule a meeting. However, if you don’t find a suitable time, lmk and we’ll play calendar jenga over email.
- For better or worse, I spend a lot of time on Zoom calls. Default to audio – it’s very draining being on video 5+hrs every single day 📹.
- I like to have an agenda for every call – if I haven’t sent it in advance, I’ll give you the context at the very start. I set aside an hour every day to prepare for the next day’s meetings.
- If you’re a founder pitching your startup, you should expect me to have visited your website and read your deck. For more specific information on how I run the pitching process at 27V, read our Operating Manual here.
- For recurring meetings, I maintain a running note 🗒️ to collate our conversation highlights and enlist action items ☑️ for me to follow up on.
Productivity
- I obsessively use productivity tools – Superhuman, Slack, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Notability, Calendly, Otter, Command E, Google Drive and even standard OS text replacement ⌨️.
- Ask me about my favorite hacks and I’ll happily share ✌️.
- I’m a nerd for great design, and spend hours ⌛ perfecting the last pixel on a deck. A common theme with all the apps I use is that they’re very well-designed. I care about aesthetics – serif over sans serif fonts, usually…
Content consumption
- I believe to succeed, one must constantly be learning. So, I read voraciously – books, research papers, articles – and I listen to podcasts (10+hrs/week). 📚🎙️
- Please send me content you found valuable 💎!
Feedback
- My wife says I’m very harsh with my feedback 🤭; which is probably true. However, as I say to all my colleagues – you should know that it comes from a good heart with the intention to be of help.
- I try to be thoughtful when communicating feedback but often struggle with phrasing and tone.
- And I welcome feedback from you. I try to hold myself to very high standards (despite regularly missing them) and would love to hear how you think I can be better both as an investor and as a human (!) 🙌.