Likes & Launch

Caring is about giving time. It can mean putting time into it, going to visit a friend, showing up, or listening when someone needs an outlet. Caring can mean saving time too, running an errand for someone, making a meal for them so they don’t have to cook. So when thinking about how to scale caring, the biggest limiting factor is time. 

Awhile back my colleague Alexander started hacking on the Gmail API. He was building some great tools for USV. He built some cool things and he’s continued to build new ways to better manage the inefficient and mundane in the inbox.

I threw out the idea about a better introduction machine. To create a little bot to take the email introductions and make them less painful on both sides: the introducer, the introducee (hardly a real word) and the person who wants to connect. He kicked it around and within a few days had an early prototype of BrittBot.

The premise of BrittBot was that you could make an introduction one direction allowing the receiver to opt in by clicking a “yes, introduce me” hyperlink. That would create a new email introducing the introducee to the person who wants to connect, the introducer (me) would be BCC’d to know the connection went through.

Early on, I usually only utilized the tool for external connections. More for the ‘long shot’ introductions. A person who I didn’t know well who wanted to connect with someone in our portfolio. That put the power in their hands to say yes to the introduction or not with no 'guilt’. I was excited because it made introductions really seamless for them, they didn’t even need to create a new email.

The tool got a lot of positive response. “Wow this is so great how can I get an introduction bot?” “Cool - that’s like magic!” A win in inbox efficiency! More power to the people I saw it. 

Now, when I shared the premise with some my colleagues, they had different reactions. They thought that the reason the introduction emails are meaningful is because you actually have to go through the manual process of writing, then making sure the person says yes and then creating a new email. They saw that exact amount of work, that extra bit of inbox pain, was part of what made the introduction powerful. 

Now, when thinking of the tool, I thought the opposite. I saw it as the email introduction bot, though used sparingly, respected the introducee’s time. They were in control of their own time and could accept with little effort, or simply ignore it. It was a way to care about them through efficiency, not effort. 

I’ve thought a lot about how to scale caring. I’ve spent time face-to-face with 1,000 different people from the USV portfolio last year alone. I care about each one of them. I want to know what they’re working on and how they’re doing, but I’m unable to give as much time to each person as I’d like. Technology enables me to gain more time to do the work to support everyone, the trick is finding the line between giving more time back vs. putting more time in.

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I’ve been working on a longer post (maybe too long) on scaling caring in a VC community. If you’ve found things that work for you, I’d love to learn more. Drop me a note on Twitter, @br_ttany or leave a comment on Disqus. 

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