Truth. Lost Among Optimism.
Black in White — Luke Chueh
I’ve loved this image for a long time. I wished I owned the original, but I was about five years late.
But its, ok, I have a copy, so I can pretend I own it.
It bothers me that I don’t own the original, but because I believe in truth.
Absolute, brutal truth.
The type of truth that sits in your brain for days as it slowly finds a path down the back of your neck and settles in your heart where it solidifies and opens you up to the realism of life.
The industry I have spent my entire life is predicated on a simple lie.
“Everything is great.”
I talk to hundreds and hundreds of founders every year, and in each conversation, at some point, those three words are spoken.
“Everything is great.”
Every time I hear them, its a like a pin in my growing balloon of optimism, that this time, this one time, I will get through an entire conversation without being lied to.
“It’s not a lie.”
Founders are abject optimists, and optimists are the greatest liars. I will get there on time, we tell ourselves.
They are never large lies. Rather they are small enough to be passed off as almost not lies. The next milestone is just around the corner; the deal will close in days not weeks; the one engineer you want to hire, will want to be hired.
“It’s not a lie.”
If the truth for founders perpetually lives between realism and falsehood, then a simple shift of thought will the difference between success and failure. A simple spot check — how real is this thought? Do I believe or do I hope? Can I prove or do I need to convince?
Matt Joseph of Locent dropped a massive Tweetstorm about his views on race and raising money. In his comments was this tweet:
[embed]https://twitter.com/_mattjoseph/status/711338676286935042[/embed]
While ultimately, investors do invest in founders, founders are not the end, but the means. The goal of the investor is to make money personally by making money for their investors. Which means the founder is the engine in the car that the investor is buying.
But it is the likelihood that others will one day buy that car that matters most, and its very possible, that at some point, the engine will get replaced.
Does pattern matching go into the selection of the car and engine? Yes. Is it easier to select founders and companies that are similar to past successes? Of course.
Does this mean investors are not fundamentally racist or sexist? No. It just says that founders of color and female founders have to change the pattern, and that is fucking hard.
Everything is not ok.
Truth gets lost too often in the pursuit of success. We smile at founders and tell them how much we love their ideas, only to frown as soon as the door closes and the founder leaves.
Founders tell prospective employees about how valuable their options will be, knowing full well that employees make the founder rich, and often not the other way around.
Employees tell their friends about the awesome culture and perks of the companies that they work at, as they job hop to the next big thing.
I’m not sure when it happened. When truth became less important than the projection of constant success, but it has become a hinderance. We live in an ecosystem where failure occurs 94.6%. We are all failures at some point, and the lack of truth in our daily interactions is causing a haze to descend around even the “truthiest” of us all.
Be critical, not cynical.
If you don’t believe, then don’t. Ask why. And then why again.
Truth lives next to understanding, and the outcomes driven by understanding always provide the primary building block of success:
Learning.