Category: Personal Reflections and Diary

Early 90s’. NYC. Trump Tower. Jewish acquaintances 70’s, Met through the arts community. Wife was excellent networker. We made great power couple. Invite wife and I for lunch. Proper, cultured people with proper manners. Family made their money buying retail buildings in the city during the depression. Went medical. Were doing medical research. We discuss present and future rental streams in the city. Problems they have etc. Turns out they want to invest in tech. Looking to find investment in the biz thru someone they can know or trust – usual jewish excellence at relationship building. I tell them tech is trendy but to only invest in what you know. Mine isn’t an investable business for them because it is too young, too uncertain, and that I have investors already. If anything they should look for product companies or use dips to accumulate blue chips. I know they know this but they are looking for another amazon or microsoft win. Reality is that even if you really enjoy their company as people, you don’t want investors from outside your industry if at all possible – even angels. the cost of education explaining and updating them is not worth the price of their money. You want an investor that doesn’t ask ‘how does that work’ but instead looks at income statement and balance sheet histories and tells you that in their experience, from what you’ve told them, you’re overinvesting here and will need more money at this point. You want people smarter than you at what you don’t do yet. Money is not good at any cost. It’s a prison. And they do far more damage than good. In fact, except in refi or exit, most investors have been a dead weight causing harm to the businesses I’ve been involved with.