Fundraising for Home Improvement Retailer
At 20, a client hired me to fundraise for a $10 million development project. Supplied with a private office, a phone, and a fancy VP title, I found the list of high net-worth business individuals with a plan to call all of them. Of course, I hated cold calls, let alone any sort of manipulation. But I appreciated diligence and daily routines. I still do. One of the things I learned is that being moneyed in Russia is a parody, a vague notion of success. When someone can be ultra-rich but locked in the compound with guards, surrounded by an ugly and hostile world. Beginner’s luck or act of determination. The whole thing worked out for me! I signed up a lead investor who acquired the company after the team completed the project.
I left the firm with regrets when the CEO exercised some form of reverse vesting. Not that he knew what it was, cutting me off the transaction fee. He promised to pay in the future when the time was right, and I figured out that the time would never be right. I recently met him for lunch in Saint-Petersburg, and we shared personal stories of the past decade. It didn’t surprise me that he hasn’t changed much in twenty years, still pursuing business goals heavy-headily, even at the time of war. But I still felt disappointed not to find any non-material sustenance in our conversation. The person who introduced me to Castaneda’s books appeared to never study them between the lines, let alone pretend to understand what he had read along the lines.