I mentioned this in my newsletter yesterday and decided to make a post out of it.
People ask me all the time how you find talent, money, etc.
My startup Golden Rule is this:
Be someone that people want to work with.
That's how you get funded. That's how you get hired and how you can hire the best people. It's why you get press and even how to get customers.
It's key to getting into venture capital.
If you were driven to be the very best person anyone could ever hope to work with, you'd go on to do amazing things.
That means you'd have a skill to offer--one that you strive to improve on everyday. You're constantly learning. You listen. You're well connected. You're pleasant. You're curious. You're calm under pressure. You work both smart and hard. You're thoughtful. You enjoy helping others and want them to succeed. You are innovative. You aren't stuck in your thinking.
When I set out to raise my next fund (which is thankfully going quite well), I wrote the deck based on why I thought others would want to work with me--because it seemed like the only important question you had to ask when considering a VC.
Follow anything more specific and you run the risk of losing the context of why something worked for someone else.