VC is a serious business. That doesn’t mean we can’t bring a sense of humor to the table.
At Tenacious Ventures, we think of investing as a partnership founded on trust, honesty, mutual respect, and a dash of humor. So, not surprising that this happened…
You see, I’m learning how to sketchnote. Sometimes I doodle meeting notes to capture ideas visually. When we partnered with Nowadays, a plant-based meat company, the words chicken nugget came up a lot in meetings. But my first attempt at a chicken nugget flopped...
Let's just say, it was hard not to make the nuggets look like chicken poop! So after a few attempts, I came up with this: chick + Au (symbol for gold, because the nuggets were golden and crispy).
As you can imagine, some concepts are easier to draw than others, especially if you are just starting out (or can't draw well, yet!). So I like to "steal like an artist", that is, use Canva and lots of icons & emojis.
Trying to visually capture a concept is fun and multi-dimensional. Sometimes the sketch can be both a pun on words, events & concepts. Like in this instance where during a recent meeting, we asked Max Elder from Nowadays about gluten.
Creating visuals also encourages lateral thinking. I drew this when Nowadays said they were striving to be a zero-waste company by transforming food waste from the manufacturing process into breading. (Unbeknown to me, waste product is currently fed to chickens. So snap!)
I’d been using to symbolize nuggets in chat, so when Max from Nowadays mentioned whole cuts of meat, what came to mind was and with that, the age-old dilemma of which came first: the chicken or the egg?
For me, making visuals is fun and brings a bit of levity and humor to the day. It was great to connect with Max Elder from Nowadays over visuals and have a laugh. Oh, and for the avoidance of any doubt, I am totally paying attention to the meetings not just doodling. I wouldn’t want you to think that I wasn’t.