I wanted to catch up with Phil Morle (I don't need to explain who Phil Morle is, do I?) and have a conversation with him about the relationship between early-stage investors and the founders in whose companies they invest.  

Phil has been writing a lot lately, or maybe I just noticed...but either way, his writing is resonating with me and a recent 'article' he wrote prompted this recorded conversation.

Listen as Phil, who is one of the most thoughtful investors I know, expounds (Yes. He presented and explained his ideas systematically and in detail...) on the fragility of the relationship between early-stage investors and founders.

Phil discussed:

• Being 80 days into a 30-day writing challenge
• The immense difficulty of building something from scratch and trying to turn it into something meaningful
• How founders are obsessed with the ideas that underpin their companies
• The concept that founders are motivated more by impact than money
• The reality of being time-poor and the need for investors to respect their time
• Founders are all-in...Investors are not
• Founders are "bad at some things" but may have to do everything at the start
• The imperative for investors to "be there" for the founders
• Co-imagining the future with the founders

Other titles we seriously considered for this episode:

1. Drinking From the Firehose of Life
2. Red Flags In Little Emoticons
3. Funding Discovery, Not Growth
4. Building Something While the World Doesn't Care
5. Squeezing Out All the Toxic People

The audio on this episode was expertly edited by Isabelle Goh.