Gotta Have Heart! Go Giants!

Congrats to the New York Giants for having the heart to play, and win, against the Green Bay Packers, yesterday in subzero weather.   

All the commentators and pundits going into the last 3 games didn't give them much of chance (cold, lucky playing, too many injuries, Eli is not a clutch player, etc)   I saw one chart (there are better ones out there) that showed Eli Manning QB rating falling from 120 to below 70 depending on outdoor temperature.  Below 0, know one really knew what he'd do, but from the trend you'd assume this game was going to be a wipeout and the Giants were going to get crushed.

It's not unlike what almost all entrepreneurs face when trying to build a company, raise money, recruit talent, create a new product and then sell it.  It takes something beyond persistance, and beyond passion, knowledge or experience.  It takes heart.  It's a characteristic that is deep seated and almost just a part of that entrepreneur that will never go aware no matter the circumstance.

I think it's the one quality that great managers and investors should pay special attention to, but often get distracted by other things, like a track record or the market size or competition.

But at the end of the day, deep down, I truly believe that if an entrepreneur has heart, they can just about get through any challenge. As Mark Twain said: it's not the dog you send in to the fight, it's fight that's in the dog, that counts. 

When I watched the Giants these last 3 games, I just felt like the whole team, including Eli Manning, their sometimes erratic QB, and their coaching staff, with that sometimes incredibly conservative play calling, had quite a bit of heart that was rarely showing up in their stats.   

I see that with entrepreneurs.  I've been incredibly fortunate to be able to back entrepreneurs like Rob LoCascio of LivePerson, Peter Lee and Jamie Bernardine of Datasynapse, and all the other entrepreneurs we've backed, including the entrepreneurs that didn't quite make it from a financial returns perspective for us.  All I like to believe have and had this heart trait in spades. 

It's a very subtle trait, and extremely hard to judge sometimes, and often discounted massively by almost everyone.  I am going to spend some time thinking about it, but there is some pattern recognition and intuition required in discovering it in others.  I'll blog about it some more when I figure it out.   If I could talk about it, without getting laughed at, I'd say that the heart of the company founding entrepreneurs we backed account for a good portion of our top quartile returns.  One public thing I can say is that 11 of 14 companies in our prior portfolio survived and thrived in the bubble and bust and that's saying a lot more about the founders that anything else.  They have heart and were often misjudged; otherwise my small and relatively unknown SAVP fund (at the time!) would never have had a shot at backing them.  I guess in some ways we were misjudged as well.

The silver lining on all the misjudgement of entrepreneurs, is that, at the end of the day, it turns into an advantage.  The competition doesn't take you seriously, incumbents don't get worried and don't even bother to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).   No one expects you to pull it off, the pressure is off. 

That's what I kept telling people about the Giants the last few games-- no pressure.  Green Bay's and Dallas' teams you could just see the pressure in their face, playing at home, with the presumption of a win, and how it impacted them.  The Giants and Eli had nothing to lose.  And frankly, the best entrepreneurs play the same way and take advantage of the misjudgements. 

Again, hats off to the Giants.  It's good to be reminded what really counts at the end of the day.   Gotta have heart.   

PS.  For those that missed it, check out the final minutes of the game here.