This Year, Collapse Your Wave Functions
Josh here. Recently, I had a call with a fantastic founder last week about raising a round of investment.
The conversation centered around leverage, speed, and in his words and one of my newest phrases “apply leverage to collapse the wave function.“
Let’s begin.
What is a Wave Function?
In quantum mechanics, the act of measurement or observation is thought to cause the “wave function” of a quantum system to collapse from a superposition of multiple states to a single state.
The collapse of the wave function is only associated with the act of measurement or observation of a quantum system. The mere existence of a quantum system does not cause its wave function to collapse, only when an observer interacts with the system, the wave function collapses.
When an observer measures the position or the momentum of a quantum particle, the wave function of that particle collapses to a single position or momentum.
Founders, this is your world. You’re having many conversations with investors & stakeholders about what could be. Their responses and your relationship with them is in a superposition of possible outcomes:
they might invest
they might introduce you to people
they might join your team
they might be helpful
So on and so forth.
Founders, it’s time for you to look at each roadblock in front of you as a wave function, and begin applying leverage to collapse it. In other words:
What are the things on your plate that are uncertain? Not “in progress” but specifically not moving along and could go many different ways—a superposition of states
Why are they uncertain? Why isn’t it going faster, collapsing?
What leverage you can acquire or currently have?
Reduce the friction
Collapse it.
Rinse & repeat
Example Scenario
“You’ve been speaking with an Angel Investor for some time and they say they are interested in investing”
The Superpositions:
Capability: their liquidity
Risk appetite: the amount of $ they would invest
Why isn’t it going faster?
Because you haven’t sent them a SAFE & wire instructions
Because they’re waiting for other investors to invest first
What leverage can you apply?
Send them a SAFE & wire instructions
Send the other investors a SAFE & wire instructions
How do you reduce friction?
Have all documents ready to go immediately (e.g. prefilled forms or services like Clerky, Gust Launch, Stripe Atlas, or LTSE Equity). Make it easy for them to wire.
Collapse it
Sign and wire. Great. Now you have the money in the bank. Next.
If they don’t do it, now you know they’re not going to. Great, now you’ve saved yourself weeks of back and forth. Next.
There are many other scenarios you’ll likely come across:
“A potential team member might join”
“Someone might be able to introduce you to some great people”
“Your customer might sign a big contract”
“X person/entity might be able to do Y thing”
Collapse them.
Don’t let the fear of a bad outcome prevent you from seizing a great one.
Picture your next major milestone as a company; there are likely 2-3 small tentacles (action items) that immediately sprout (hint: those are wave functions!).
Now, ask yourself honestly, “why isn’t this happening faster?”.
Once you do you’ll look around and realize all wave functions around you have collapsed at a significantly faster speed than you had anticipated, all because you applied leverage in those areas.
Why is This JP’s Theme for 2023?
Here’s what’s on the scorecard for JP going into 2023:
4 founders on the brink of closing their pre-seed rounds (of which all already have teams & products in market)
2 founders 1 step away from shifting out of “startup” mode to “company” mode (scaling to MM’s in ARR, raising large institutional rounds of capitol)
7 founders between 1 and 2 degrees shy of getting out of the wilderness period.
Most of you know I have little to no patience for, well, anything.
We’re on the brink of more special magic happening in the valley, and why not make it happen faster.
More on this at “Mom’s” next month….
AL & JH
