Building Investment Content & Reviewing Startups

New to this blog? Here’s a quick TL;DR.

My name is Jason and I’ve founded Joyned Capital to transform athletes into smart investors. I’m writing a blog to make education accessible to every athlete that wants to learn about investments. I use the OKR methodology to structure my work and share what has happened during the week in my blog. So, even if you haven’t subscribed to my e-course on investing yet, I still want you to learn about investing.

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This weeks’ goals

What a week! Although I have only worked on two objectives, this was an intense and hectic week, but I end it with a great feeling of satisfaction. I have spent the last seven days working on two objectives:

1. Joyned Capital has the best educational investment content for athletes.
2. Joyned Capital adds value beyond money to portfolio companies.
   

Let’s break down what happened this week.

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My actions

Most of my focus went to my first objective since we had the shoot for our Intro to Investing course scheduled for the end of this week. To that end, I have spent the week reviewing the scripts, storyboards and working intensively with the team at Session One, who’ll handle the shooting and editing of the course. 

I’ve shared it earlier, but the goal of our Intro to investing course is to help athletes build a theoretical foundation around investing. After finishing the course, athletes understand:

1. What investing is
2. Where they can invest in
3. How the different investment opportunities compare to each other
4. How to combine various investment opportunities into a portfolio
   

As shown in our 10-second preview for the Intro to Investing course on our education page, we help athletes understand the basics of investing. When they’ve completed the Intro module, we will help athletes build a deeper understanding of various investment opportunities through our Deep-dive courses. More on that later.

Next to my focus on content creation, I spent time looking at potential investment opportunities. This week, I reviewed half a dozen startups and have had meetings with three founders to assess whether there was a possible fit. 

Out of three conversations, I’m following up with two startups. Here’s why I’m interested in continuing the conversation with these companies:

• Startup A operates in a growing market, and they have a solid technical moat. This means they have built a technology that is hard to replicate for competitors. In this specific case, it’s because this company has patented its technology. This, combined with a six-figure revenue run rate, removes some of the significant challenges young startups face. In addition, they have a leadership team with strong technical and financial profiles, which positions the startup for continued growth. 
• Startup B has built and improved a product that has been running successfully in another continent. Now, Startup B has launched it in another market, where their competitor is not active, allowing Startup B to get a large market share.

Being the first to market with a product might work, but being the second offers the opportunity to learn from the mistakes made by the first. This team also has a solid technical foundation and a profound understanding of the problem they want to solve with their product. 

Results and learning

While the actual result will take a while to be seen, I have a good feeling about the investment course content that has been filmed. A couple of learnings that I have picked up while being in front of the camera were:

1. Remember why I’m doing this - to remain authentic
2. Take longer pauses when speaking than I usually would - no need to rush
3. Take 5-minute breaks during the shooting to recharge - who would’ve thought that would help, haha
   

Overall, there was a great vibe on the set, and I received strong support throughout the day. I can’t wait to see the result and experience how helpful the content is to athletes!

The biggest game-changer I’ve learned while assessing startups is the benefit of using my mouth and ears in proportion. During the calls, I emphasized letting the founders speak while writing down my questions. 

It’s not that I didn’t feel I couldn’t add anything useful to the conversation, but that that’s not the goal of the call. The goal was to understand the business: what it does, for whom, who cares, and especially where the company plans to go and how our community can help. Who would have thought that actively listening could be so helpful :)

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Planning for this week

This week, I will take it a bit slower and spend more time with my family. The last week has been full throttle, which was good and very much needed, but it came at a price. As a husband and father of two, I try my best to balance my time, but for the past weeks, that balance has been off. 

That doesn’t mean nothing is happening, to the contrary. This week, I have follow-up calls with two startups, meetings with two other founders, a couple of investors, and I’m working on another investment course for athletes. I’m going to take another stab at time-boxing because that didn’t happen at all last week. 

The last thing I’ll be working on is our Ask-Me-Anything session with our mentor Tom Kist, Managing Partner at Slingshot Ventures. During this session Tom will teach athletes about:

1. Finding a company
2. Making the deal
3. Adding value
4. Managing the relationship
5. Exiting the investment
   

To make sure the message lands with athletes, Tom will use a case from his own firm, where they have invested in a startup that is very interesting for athletes. The company has passed the startup stage and is now on the brink of its IPO (Initial Public Offering) or simply put; the company is  becoming a publicly traded company.

Are you an athlete and interested in joining the session? You can follow the latest updates via our Instagram page.

Wishing you a great week.

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Jason