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- Monks and Managers: To The People Of The Desert
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Volume #16 TL;DR:
This is Part 1 of me expanding on my initial thesis and parts of my personal journey.
Managers, just like Monks, leave a life of comfort behind to pursue a calling.
Managers, just like Monks, are all sold out for their calling and pursue it radically.
Managers, just like Monks, pursue a role in society that is vital to ensure its continued flourishing.
Managers, just like Monks, foster education and the intellectual development of society.
Managers, just like Monks, gather people around them to create something bigger than themselves.
Managers, just like Monks, master the art of interruption (monks have a practice of being interrupted in their daily lives).
Managers, just like Monks, face being misunderstood.
Managers, just like Monks, ought to spend an unusual amount of time facing their inner demons.
Managers, just like Monks, are people of the desert more than they are people of the city.
Table of Contents
Monks And Managers - A Personal Story
I believe all of us have a few books in life that uniquely shape our journey. They influence how we understand our past, who we are, and where we ought to go in life. Books are influential not only because of the stories they reveal but equally due to the point in time of our life when we pick up the book.
5 years ago, when I was 21, I started being interested in the monastic movement of the 5th century. For the next years, I would study “The Rule of St. Benedict” a book by the monk St. Benedict who started the monastic movement in the Western Roman Empire as it was starting to fall in the 5th century.
I ended up writing a 60+ page thesis about the importance of community and it has been one of the most influential books in my life so far. (Another book anybody who wants to build meaningful relationships should read is Cicero’s Treatise on Friendship).
As a young man, St. Benedict decided to move to Rome to pursue his interests in law and literature. At this time, pagan armies tore apart the Western Roman Empire, once the greatest force in history, the church was experiencing schisms, people were suffering from war, and morality was at a low ebb.
As St. Benedict experienced the state of his peers and society, he was called outwards and pursued a life as a hermit in the desert. Soon, people started to gather around him and the shift from hermit to community started in his life. Benedict had the idea of gathering monks into one grand monastery to give them the benefit of unity, community, and permanent worship in one house. He began what was to become one of the most famous monasteries in the world and he was marked to be the person who exercised the greatest influence on monasticism in the West.
His monasteries became places where the sick got found a place for care, where children were educated, where people suffering from war found shelter, and where the Christian faith was preserved as the Roman Empire fell apart. Without this community of monks in the 5th century, the world today would most likely look a lot different.
As I was reading, studying, and writing about this significant movement of a community, I was beginning my journey in Venture Capital. And hence, a community for VC Associates was born. It grew to 350 Venture Associates, we shared deal flow once a week, had an AI algorithm which generated 1:1 introductions between members based on their investment focus, hosted events with Google, etc. In one year, we made 900 unique 1:1 introductions alone - I believe many of the members will be Emerging Managers in the coming years.
I started to realize that being a monk in Venture Capital was not just an “interesting” approach, it was the most powerful way for me to operate in the way that was most aligned with who I am.
Monks And Managers - An Investment Thesis
Over time, I started to develop the LP strategy for the family office I was with for the past years, spoke to 100s of funds and Emerging Managers and built close relationships with LPs I can call friends. Emerging Managers was what I lived and breathed and it was the beginning of the evolution of Embracing Emergence.
I started to begin developing a thesis for a Fund of Funds, as I was starting to play with the idea of putting together a fund to support the best first-time managers. This thesis was on “Monks & Managers” - the first step to Embracing Emergence (Embracing Emergence is not a FoF these days, but investing capital in the best EMs myself is of course a dream).
Here is an outline of the thesis, and I believe it can inform the decision-making of any LP and self-awareness for most Emerging Managers:
Managers, just like Monks, leave a life of comfort behind to pursue a calling.
Managers, just like Monks, are all sold out for their calling and pursue it radically.
Managers, just like Monks, pursue a role in society that is vital to ensure its continued flourishing.
Managers, just like Monks, foster education and the intellectual development of society.
Managers, just like Monks, gather people around them to create something bigger than themselves.
Managers, just like Monks, master the art of interruption (monks have a practice of being interrupted in their daily lives).
Managers, just like Monks, face being misunderstood.
Managers, just like Monks, ought to spend an unusual amount of time facing their inner demons.
Managers, just like Monks, are people of the desert more than they are people of the city.
Pursuing Calling
When you speak to 100s of Managers, you start to realize the importance of the Manager realizing or noticing their calling. The best managers have something within them that made the pathway to starting a fund the clear path to pursue - not that they know how, but that they know they should.
Calling is somewhat an indicator of success, or at least of non-failure - I guess some call it a “chip on the shoulder”. Calling is a track record most LPs miss to assess. But it’s when you assess the elements of the person that are not on a piece of paper that you find value in hidden places and become the best picker of people.
Just like St. Benedict was living in Rome, coming from an affluent family, pursuing his education in law - many Emerging Managers have a life that imitates a certain security and position in life …. well, that is before they become an Emerging Manager.
Emerging Managers leave their career, salary, benefits, nice dinners with their partner and family, the next vacation to the beach, a new car after 3-5 years, etc. behind. I think we often make this a small thing, but it is not. It’s somebody’s life and quite the sacrifice to leave behind. It’s when the Emerging Manager moves from the city to the desert.
A modern monk from the 20th century, Thomas Merton, wrote this about noticing this call:
Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice out there calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice in here calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.
The best Emerging Managers have a calling that is inside them, not something external that is calling out to them. And if you look at the personalities of the most successful investors in Venture, you can quickly see that this is most likely true.
Flourishing For Society
A couple of years ago we hosted a talk at one of Coolwater’s cohorts that we called “Poetry and Technology”. At the end of it, we encouraged Emerging Managers to write a poem about what they look for in people. The essential part of the exercise was not to communicate the “right” elements you look for in people but to spend time reflecting upon what you actually look for and to find words for it.
Our desire for this exercise was born out of a clear responsibility that Emerging Managers have in shaping the future of society. And for LPs that responsibility is in picking the right EMs who responsibly pick the right people building the companies that are going to shape our lives.
Not all technology is equally good. Some technology is not good at all. Not all people have equally good intentions. It’s a simple truth, but it does not always influence how we operate. But it should. It’s something that should keep us up at night every now and then.
Fostering Education
The monks of the 5th century started making the monasteries places of education for children. Parents actually sent their children to these monks for extended periods of time in order for the children to learn to write, read, and be influenced by the positively oriented lives of the monks.
The monks had a heart for creating far-removed places where people could come for learning, studying, writing, reading, and practicing how to live life well. I see many of these desires reflected in Emerging Managers. Some Emerging Managers know that they have insights that are crucial to be passed on to others - they express in their quarterly updates, events they host for LPs, or how they journey alongside founders.
Tools To Be A Monk
The reason I partner with Sydecar is that this newsletter can go beyond (hopefully) being insightful or refreshing to read. I want to provide tools just as much as I want to provide thoughts.
And the timing of this volume could not have been better, since Sydecar is launching a Syndicate product that enables Managers to practice these monastic elements in their operations. The product strengthens the Manager’s ability to build community, provide insights and learnings to people, and provide an engaging place for those who want to journey together!
Here is an interactive link for their Syndicate Product for our community:
Experience Sydecar’s Syndicate platform in action. Their interactive demo walks you through how this powerful tool can streamline your syndicate operations, from setting up your first syndicate on the platform to handling investor communications, all in one intuitive place. Whether you’re handling a single SPV or managing multiple syndicates, their platform is designed to save you time, reduce complexity, and help you focus on sourcing and closing more deals.
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