by Lionesses of Africa Operations Dept
“…give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” — Plato
As we continue our journey through the investment and finance world in our articles, making sense of the iniquities as we go, whilst creating some kind of ‘AH-HA!’ moment which will brighten the road ahead as we try to navigate our growth and cash flow needs vs our larger long term projects, we somehow need to also find the time to improve and turbocharge our approach to investors.
Having pointed out previously (here) that the two main areas of concentration before you stand under the spotlight in front of an investor should be on inwardly learning and digesting your numbers until talking about them becomes second nature, and then embracing the cringeworthy act of becoming the ‘Dinner Party Jerk’ as Andrew Chen (GP at the ‘a16z’ Fund) says of your Pitch (here), now we shall work to make this cringeworthy act a little less cringeworthy by explaining the psychology and process behind it.
Remember - at the end of the day, you have somehow managed to get in front of an investor, an investor who each morning finds yet another pile of business plans on his desk (odds suggest it is a ‘he’ see here), and for some reason has given you a 40 minute Zoom, now you need to get him to move to the next stage…
C’mon, any gambler will tell you the odds just don’t make sense. The ‘a16z’ fund, look at 3,000 of the 4,000 startups in the USA searching for VC funding each year in their sector (Tech) from which they take 200 and of these they only invest in about 20 a year. Tiny! These numbers are similar across the entire VC/PE world. Somehow you have got off the pile on his desk and onto a Zoom meeting…SO NOW MAKE IT COUNT!
Whilst flicking through our most recent Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [don’t ask - ED], we came across a paper written by Rogers, Chicas, Kelly, Kubin, Christian, Kachanoff, Berger, Puryear, McAdams & Gray entitled rather interestingly: “Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey increases meaning in life.” (here). They write: “Meaning in life is tied to the stories people tell about their lives. We explore whether one timeless story—the Hero’s Journey—might make people’s lives feel more meaningful. This enduring story appears across history and cultures and provides a template for ancient myths (e.g., Beowulf) and blockbuster books and movies (e.g., Harry Potter).”
How you get your story across matters. We, as human beings love stories, we love journeys and importantly, we love playing a part in someone else’s story by joining them on a journey. Think (as they mention) Harry Potter, think why that ignited the imagination of the whole world. There was a journey to defeat evil and slay the dragon (in this case Voldemort), there were many problems to overcome, there was a group of allies, and of course, there was the hero who was the centre of the story bringing all together to, in the end, find happiness!
The reason why this is so captivating is because it reaches to the central issue the human mind has been struggling with since before Plato (died 348BC), who himself wrote extensively on this very subject, the concept of an eternal search for happiness. Plato, considered to be the world’s greatest philosopher, would agree about reading being a ‘crucial vehicle’ and indeed would have been a huge fan of Harry Potter, writing that “Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” (…such poetry in a single sentence). Successful writers (such as Shakespeare, Dante, Jane Austin, Dostoyevsky, George Elliot (actually a woman who could not get published without a man’s name), and many others) from Plato’s time on have all given ‘wings to the mind’ through the simple plot: Hero - Dragon - Problems - Allies - slaying Dragon - happy ever after. (Yes, Walt Disney too.)
That is not to say the spoken word has any less impact (otherwise we would never shed tears of both joy and sadness in the theatre), and the heroic stories of Queen Amanirenas, the warrior queen and ruler of Kush (buried in Sudan), Queen Amina of the Hausa people in Nigeria, Queen Njinga ruling over 2 kingdoms, Ndongo and Matamba (Angola) and of course Shaka of the Zulus have been passed down through verbal storytelling, prior to more recently being recorded in written form. These stories told around the evening fire, followed the same pattern as Harry Potter and gave ‘flight to the imagination’.
In addition, as Albrecht Classen writes: “Their texts naturally and intentionally tend to over-dramatize individual situations, a strategy which simply serves to understand better the basic conflicts, tensions, issues, and questions presented here.”
Why does that matter to us? Central to getting your story across to anyone, but in our case investors, is for you to grasp Plato’s concept, to bring investors along the ‘yellow brick road’ (yes ‘The Wizard of Oz’ follows the same). If you can turn your life, your journey, the problems that you overcame and solved, the allies (the team and others that helped you) through making yourself the hero of your own story you too can make Investors ‘understand better’, spark their imagination and most importantly, grab their attention.
The turbocharging of this power is when the ‘others’ start to see themselves as joining you on this journey as an ally, to not only join your journey, but become the central ally, an intricate and essential part in allowing you to fulfill your destiny. Yes, destiny - did we mention the over-dramatising part?
How will their investment (and their mentorship and connections) help you get to your end goal? How do they make a difference to the outcome of your story?
This is then less about you and more about them. Novels may be fiction, but they reflect real life, real fears, real dragons and real heroes. T’was ever thus. Turn this to your advantage. Do not fly alone.
Stay safe.