How to Steal the Moon

And the importance of purpose in the pursuit of ambitious things.

Steve Carell voices an awesome villain in Despicable Me, the 2010 hit movie (now franchise…) about a supervillain who, despite his nefarious intentions, undergoes a significant transformation across multiple film installments. In the first film, Gru is known for his elaborate schemes to steal the moon and become the world’s greatest villain. His plans take an unexpected turn when he adopts three orphaned girls, Margo, Edith, and Agnes. As he becomes more involved in their lives, he reconsiders his villainous ways and finds greater purpose in the process.

As early-stage, predominantly pre-seed investors we see this dynamic at play in a lot of founding teams. They have a great idea for how they’re going to “hack” an opportunity, or why they have a silver bullet to own a market. But in our experience the truly generational companies aren’t built that way. Generational companies are built by founders with purpose. We aim to identify that purpose and why as quickly and early as possible. This dovetails with How We Do Tech Diligence at Seed, and in many ways is the most important single leading indicator of a company we think can go the distance.