Why writing is your calling card
A venture capitalist shares how a love of long-form nonfiction journalism shaped his belief in the power of writing. He argues that writing forces clearer thinking and serves as a calling card for investors in the venture world. He references Bezos's six-page memo culture at Amazon as a prime example of writing's cognitive and communicative value.
Summary
The speaker, a venture capitalist, reveals that storytelling ranks among the top three traits he looks for in successful founders. He traces his own love of reading and writing to business school, where he transitioned from standard business books to long-form nonfiction journalism, which he finds uniquely powerful for its ability to impact readers deeply in just 20 pages or so.
He connects this appreciation for writing to his investment focus on marketplaces. Because marketplaces were a novel category when he began investing, there was no existing knowledge base. He and others had to build that knowledge from scratch, codify it, and write it down — underscoring how writing serves as a tool for crystallizing and preserving complex thinking.
The speaker draws a parallel to Jeff Bezos's famous six-page memo format at Amazon, arguing that requiring written documents forces people to think through problems more thoroughly, identify loose ends, and produce more cohesive ideas compared to slide-based presentations. Finally, he emphasizes that in venture capital, written content functions as a calling card — when founders who don't know you encounter your published thinking on their specific business challenges, it prompts them to reach out, creating organic relationship-building opportunities.
Key Insights
- The speaker ranks storytelling among the top three traits of successful founders, placing it on par with other core entrepreneurial skills.
- The speaker argues that long-form nonfiction journalism is uniquely powerful because a single 20-page piece can have a profound impact on the reader.
- The speaker notes that in marketplace investing, there was no pre-existing knowledge base, so foundational knowledge had to be written down and codified as it was developed.
- The speaker references Bezos's six-page memo format as evidence that writing forces more thorough problem-solving — compelling authors to find and tie up loose ends in a way that slide decks do not.
- The speaker claims that publishing written knowledge about a subject acts as a calling card in venture capital, causing founders to proactively reach out when they recognize the investor understands their business.
Topics
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