I regularly get asked the question “why do you bother writing things like the Term Sheet series or the Letter of Intent series.” (yeah – I also get the “why do you bother blogging” question.)
While writing things like the Term Sheet series is fun, gives Jason and I chance to collaborate on something different, gets us connected to lots of new and interesting people, and occasionally forces us to think about something and/or express an opinion on something where we previously would hedge about, we don’t learn that much.
However, as I was responding to yet another board email for one of my companies on 409A issues (and going back and forth with Jason on it), he suggested that – in the case of the 409A series – we were forced to really learn about 409A issues, do our research, form opinions, and put them into (semi-articulate) words. As a result, this is now helping us and our companies quickly deal with 409A – effectively the tail (the blog) is now wagging the dog (us).
Why Bother? Because we just got a lot smarter about something that suddenly is important to us and our companies, helped us get critical feedback from people we wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to, and ultimately will help us do a better job for our portfolio companies. It’s satisfying to be able to say “blogging helps me learn”, since continually learning new things is high up in my hierarchy of needs.