BIO: Peter Saddington is a software developer, a multi-founder, an author, and a VC. He founded a $2.5M BTC mining fund, a $10M IoT fund, and a$50M Web3 fund in 2022.
STORY: Peter hired an engineer who had impeccable technical skills. Peter was so impressed by the guy that he decided to make him the CEO of his startup. Six months later, the guy fired Peter from his own company.
LEARNING: It takes more than technical skills to be a leader. A leader needs to be a person that can be led and can lead others.
“The number one most important skill, I believe, in any type of investment, is are you willing to ask every single question possible?”
Peter Saddington
Guest profile
Peter Saddington is a software developer, a multi-founder, an author, and a VC. He founded a $2.5M BTC mining fund, a $10M IoT fund, and a$50M Web3 fund in 2022. He published three books - Scrum, Agile, and PersonalBranding. He writes “The Agile VC” newsletter, which covers Inside Startups, Venture Capital, and life!
Worst investment ever
Over a decade ago, Peter built a great startup and bootstrapped it out of his garage. This was a passion project of his. At the time, the digital currencies were growing. Interestingly, there were all these silos of exchanges and no ability to create arbitrage opportunities between multiple exchanges. As an engineer, Peter thought this was an absolutely fantastic proposition of becoming a middleware solution provider so that traders and investors could trade across platforms and multiple exchanges and find opportunities for liquidity.
Peter started building it. He put together a team and bootstrapped it with his own money. Eventually, over many validations, his community and user groups said this was amazing and should be scaled. Peter raised $4.8 million for this venture. Everything was great, and it seemed like there was no possibility that this thing could ever go off the rails. His global community of cryptocurrency and digital currency enthusiasts grew and had almost 78% daily active users.
Peter had hired an engineer in whom he saw an amazing ability to take the company to great heights. Peter was so enamored by this engineer’s communication ability that he decided to mentor him. Peter was really impressed by his technical prowess. In his naivety, he believed this was the primary value that the engineer could bring to his company. Peter elevated the engineer to CEO. Big mistake! Six months later, the engineer fired Peter from his passion project.
Lessons learned
- When promoting an employee, you must understand the individual deeper than just what they bring to the table.
- When choosing a leader, they need to be a person that can be led and can lead others.
- Spend enough time with people before you promote them to truly understand their depth, morality, ethics, and, most importantly, integrity.
Andrew’s takeaways
- When hiring a prospective leader, analyze everything that person can bring to the table, not just the skills.
- Leaders need to be multifaceted and able to rise when things are tough.
- The key to asking questions is listening; the key to listening is taking notes.
Actionable advice
Ask more questions. Reach for questions that avail emergent opportunities in emergent contexts and conversation. Be situationally aware enough to listen actively and ask pertinent and essential questions that give you context for informed decision-making.
No.1 goal for the next 12 months
Peter’s goal for the next 12 months is to launch a startup that intertwines his top passions; blockchain, cars, racing, and family.
Parting words
“Stay positive, and understand, as the stoics used to say, that the only thing that you ever have in your control is your own reasoned choice and how you’re going to respond to the situation at hand.”
Peter Saddington
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