The Joy of Life in Doing

I've been working in and out of venture capital, private equity, mentoring and advising startups since moving back to North America in 2017. Coming from running my own agency and entertainment consultancy for nearly a decade in Hong Kong, I thought I'd pay it forward and help aspiring founders. I eventually launched a fund with the thesis of supporting creatives and culturally driven companies, cause heck, I know what it’s like to be in their shoes. I went from leading creative teams to helping creative founders find funding and navigate the weird world of finance and operations.

Along the way though, I kind of lost myself.

It was a lot to “brain”; working on financial and operational plans, due diligence, mundane office work, I lost a bit of that soul that made life vibrant.

I lost that creativity I practiced when I connected brands with celebrities, dabbling in music and producing live events. That joy in bringing concepts to life. I missed that feeling.

Enter Joie de Vivre.

Around a month ago, I traveled to the South of France to assist on an epic project. I was asked to advise a first-time, multi-day music festival that was to take place in a series of venues, including a number of 17th-century chateaus and a 6 million-year-old cave. (As a side note, I’m proud to say that after doing 6, maybe 7 of these over the years, they've never turned into the type of festival that rhymes with  'fire' 😅). This time though, rather than be responsible for talent, design, and everything, I got to really sit back, enjoy, watch the team, and just fill in where I was needed.

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During the first night, we stayed up until 8 in the morning talking through the run-of-show, operations and team structure, you know... the basics. I felt right at home. A couple of sleepless nights and three chateaus later, I remembered that this event was conceptualized and executed by a team that wasn't backed by any fund, angel or any deep corporate pockets. It was backed by pure hustle and creative passion, by a group willing to stare oblivion in the face and risk reputation and debt, time and again, to deliver a vision—the types of people & founders I've dedicated my career to.  There’s a type of entrepreneurial thrill about having no options but to succeed -- where intuition & necessity solves problems.

These events are run by visionaries driven almost entirely by passion to show the world what joy is to them. Not necessarily for financial returns (yes, partially) but more about building a meaningful community that share a deep-rooted commonality.

And isn't that what founders are? Ones who look for solutions to mold the world into that joy they want to see? And at the end of the day, money becomes the outcome of building something that matters to them.

[Investor-Hat intermission] Side note to my LPs - it also helps that these concepts, these festivals are perfect for testing new ideas, introducing new products, new technology and seeing how quickly they can be adopted, etc. A unified way of blending consumer, content, tech & finance in the simplest way.

Long story short - my Joy of Life (err Joie de Vivre) is making sure I'm doing something that balances my past & present.  This ‘engagement’ helped me rediscover that and focus on why I'm doing what I'm doing with Social Study Ventures .  And perhaps more importantly, it's brought me back from the verge of losing myself.

Finding balance. Business and creativity. Numbers and ideas. And I think I've found the perfect blend of that in what I do. Have you?

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