How to become a Time Venture Capitalist
“In the future, wealth will be measured not just by the amount in your bank account, but in your ability to structure your affairs to realize complete individual autonomy and independence.” Nat Eliason’s summary of The Soverign Individual
If the future belongs to those with control their own schedules, how does that transition happen? How do employees get out of the rat race and make the shift to autonomy over their work?
Focus on what is within your control, how you spend your time.
Taken from Niall Dhoerty’s post about 7 Habits
A Time Investor
Cal Newport in the book Deep Work profiled the working habits of Teddy Roosevelt. Cal’s observation was that Teddy did not want to give up any of his hobbies, and so found a way to continue his non-scholastic pursuits while attending Harvard.
“To support this extracurricular exuberance Roosevelt had to severely restrict the time left available for what should have been his primary focus: his studies at Harvard.”
During this restricted time, Teddy would intensely pour him self into the task at hand. Cal calls this period of extreme intensity “Deep Work”, and goes on to share a variety of ways we can create a deep work habit.
Teddy Roosevelt is a good example of the idea of a Time Venture Capitalist. But to really understand what this idea means, we need to first understand VC and what they do.
What does a Venture Capitalist do?
Jarrid Tingle breaks down how a VC approaches their investing from a layman’s perspective.
VCs subsidize innovation and growth
Invest cash in return for equity (ownership)
Out of every 10 investments, roughly 3 will lose investor capital, 4 will return 1x investor capital, and 3 will generate a positive return
A good VC will have 1 investment out of 10 that will generate more profits than the size of their fund (all the money put in)
VCs look for companies that can scale exponentially and return 50x-100x of the investment in that company
VCs that invest using money diversify their allocation, but keep a very close eye on how each company in their portfolio is doing. When one shows signs of promise, they may increase their investment in future fundraising rounds for that company. But when a company shows signs of underperforming, a VC may simply stop putting in any more time, attention, and resources towards that company.
In short, VCs cut their losses, and double down on their wins.
What if we applied Rolsiveltian intensity to how we invest our time?
Becoming a Time VC
Can anyone become a Time VC? A Time Venture Capitalist may be an employee with one or two side hustles. They work 9-5 but have aspirations of quitting once the sidle hustle has the potential to pay their bills or replace their salary.
A freelancer might be a Time VC building up their portfolio of clients and services they offer. They have a mix of clients they charge by the billable hour, others on a retainer all while writing a book or putting together an online course to sell.
Lastly, the business owner or executive looking to leverage their time and attention could also fit the Time VC category. Their efforts may be all within one company, but they have the freedom to choose what they work on and are able to focus in on higher leverage activities while delegating lower leverage ones.
VC’s Measure their Investment
Traditional VC’s use Cap Tables, or Capital Allocation Tables to keep track of all of their investments. Then they are using the quarterly and annual reports of organizations to measure how well those companies are doing. Sure there are numerous ways to measure a company, from customer engagement, Customer Service Satisfaction Scores like the NPS, total customers etc. The list of metrics companies use is nearly endless, yet they all use a few key metrics to rank how they are doing in comparison to competitors, and the market.
A Time VC should use similar simple measures to gauge their success.
How to Measure Your Time
Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, uses 3 stopwatches he carries with him everywhere:
“he tracks his time to make sure he gets the most from his waking hours. He divides his life into blocks — 50% creative time, 30% teaching time, and 20% other stuff” writes Harvard Business Review.
Each week, Jim can look back and measure the time invested towards his goals, and re-evaluate what needs to change the next week. Not all of us have the luxury of 50% creative time, or demarcated boundaries in the areas of our work.
A simpler method for those interested in productivity is to use a physical kitchen timer, or software plugins to visually track their progress. The Pomodoro Method breaks work into 25 min segments, then the user takes a 5 min break. With hash marks on paper or lines in a spreadsheet, users can track their daily and weekly progress, bringing a physical and visual dimension to progress on tasks.
From Incremental to Exponential
Working deeply and measuring time spent on work may help us improve incrementally, but the authors of the Sovereign Individual book predicted back in 1997 how technology might be used to gain exponential leverage on an individual’s output.
“The individual as an ensemble: As our access to information technology grows, we’ll be able to multiply our abilities by manifesting a potentially limitless number of agents to complete tasks for us, whether they’re humans or programs. One person’s potential output will increase exponentially with technology. You could even continue acting after death.” - Nat Eliason’s summary of The Sovereign Individual
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is one example of using humans to complete complex tasks, all set in motion by ‘programming’ the procedure.
Programmable money may allow smart contracts to continue earning money for the deceased long after death.
Conclusion
Not everyone can unlock the power of automation and time leverage. The technology is still complex but is becoming more accessible every day. It will be up to each person to learn new things and embrace the change or let the opportunity pass by.
We are not machines pumping out productivity. Learning how to leverage our time may mean more room in our lives for deeper relationships, more service, or more rest. Perhaps we become time rich like Jim Collins and add more creative time into our routine.
Through learning how to leverage our time, double down on our wins, and take an honest look at where we are investing the time we spend working, we can ‘spend’ our time well.