Love Letter #9: Invert, always Invert

Hello Mighty Team,

‎ As a preface, this letter was not intended for you. When I learned that my first daughter Sofia was going to be born (when I didn’t even know what her name was going to be), I decided I was going to start writing her a letter. Like News but from the past, something she could read when she was older. By the time I was 17, I had lost both my parents, and I always thought that a letter that taught me how they thought about things, how they face the curve balls thrown by life, would have been useful. So, I’m happy to report that 10 years later, that letter is 119 pages long (as of today), and I keep writing it.

So every time that something remarkable happens, or when I feel down, I take out the file and hack it.

What was remarkable about this letter was figuring out the whole “Invert always Invert” concept from Charlie Munger. Instead of re-writing something for you, I figure I let you in a little bit into my personal life and just show you what I wrote to my daughters.

Hello, my warrior princesses:

‎ I'm writing to tell you I'm here, still in the fight with the company. We've grown irresponsibly, and the truth is that I know we have six tough months ahead of us. However, if you ask me, I acknowledge the problem, and I also acknowledge our strength. It's nothing we haven't survived before, but it's annoying to know that we have some tough months ahead of us. All this of my own making.

I've been reading Poor Charlie's Almanack, which are the talks that Charlie Munger gave to different people. There are some incredible things in that book, and others, that I have to admit, I don't fully understand. He said that in life you had to "invert, always invert." The phrase seemed cryptic to me and I had a hard time understanding it. He also said that he wanted to know where he was going to die, so he never would go. I kept reading his speeches like a carnivore eating a salad until I finally understood what he meant. So I wanted to do an exercise here about the company and then a bit about our family and what I want for you.

For Veevart, I must think that we want a financially successful company. We want to have a compact company, full of people who feel challenged and are not afraid of work, people who want to grow beyond what they can be given, who are ambitious and know how to discern the traps that lie hidden between instant gratification and long-term gratification. We want our company to attract the best people, for people to aspire to work with us. We want to be a sales and marketing machine. We want our products to be recognized for their robustness, ease of use, and innovation. We want our customers to see us as partners, as much more than just vendors, that our implementations and our daily management of customers provide 10 times the value of what they paid. We want our city and our country to see us as architects of progress, as role models.

Hello my happy warriors,


I hope you are well. Today I am arriving with you at the Athens airport to take you to Paros. I will sleep there, and then return to your mother who will be waiting for me in Athens. We will spend a week there, half working, half visiting.

The "invert, always invert" exercise has been very useful to me, and I want to continue it thinking about you and on a personal level.

Let's say that on a personal level, I have been able to observe that everything has a cost. So let's say that having a lot of money can have a very high cost: for example, you can grow up capricious without understanding the importance of sacrifice. Maybe money gets to my head, and this makes me arrogant and costs me my family. And yet I do not deny that I want to have good money. Not infinite, but I want the net, to the family, to enter us $1.2 M annually. That is the goal I have set for myself by the time I am 50 years old. In order to enjoy $1.2 M annually, I have to make $2.4 million, since the government is going to take half. But that's my number. From then on, we can give everything to charities, and even then, so much of that money will go to various causes.

So inverting this, let's say the statement would be: what should I do to have a mediocre professional life, without major triumphs, that does not guarantee me a peaceful old age, that makes me continue to suffer for money from time to time, that makes us lose sleep for this cause frequently? To achieve this I must:

  • Stop educating myself, not dedicate time to reading, and instead get lost on the internet, television, and other non contributing activities

  • Not take responsibility for what happens to me

  • Not make difficult decisions

  • Take stupid and ill-calculated risks

  • Not start new business ideas - not take risks

  • Not push Veevart to give her best

  • Sell the company badly and get a job

  • Not invest our money, but leave it in a bank account without doing anything

  • Not look for new companies or people who contribute to me and open my eyes to other realities and other games or businesses

Look, I have managed to avoid all the written points, except the last one. This is hard for me. It's not that I haven't tried, but it's difficult. However, I think I have to plan it. See how I can do it. I know that at that level, it is more giving than receiving. I have to see how I can contribute to people who can later, contribute to me.

Now let's examine my relationship with your mother, and how I would like it to be and continue. Your mother is not only my life partner, the person I chose to start a family with, but she is also my best friend. I want her to feel loved, to feel beautiful, and desired, to feel proud of what she does, and what she has achieved. I want her to feel free and not tied down. I want her to know that our bond is strong, that we are two trees that, as they have grown, have become intertwined but continue to grow upwards on their own and with their own directions.

The opposite would then be that she feels abandoned, and unappreciated; that she feels that she is tied down by the chains that marriage imposes, not because we really love each other and because we want to be together. For this, I would have to:

  • Not have details with her

  • Not tell her that I love her

  • Not take time to be with her, despite work

  • Not tell her anything

  • Not encourage her to go out and have her own life, and her own friends

  • Not let her see how much she has done and achieved

For you, Your Highnesses, I want happiness, the happiness that comes from work and a good book, I want you to have everything emotionally: the hug, the kiss, the responsibility, the scolding, and the occasional grounding that always tunes you up. You need all that to grow healthy. I want you to grow up big and strong, curious and ambitious, I want you to grow up readers, which is the less-known secret to success and happiness. Above all, I want you to do all this because you want to, because it comes from within. The world to come, the one you will face is full of distractions, and false information. I want you to have the super power of concentration. I want you to learn to know the human being, to admire its greatness, and to always be watching their pettiness, and their second intentions. I want you to have original ideas, ideas that come from you and the books you read, and not from stupid ideologies you saw on the internet or from your friends.

The opposite of this would be for you to grow lazy, silly, glued to a screen, not reading. It would be for you not to show curiosity, to not be studious, or athletic. For your friends to be “everything” and for you not to understand that achievements are the fruits of sacrifice and work. I want everything you do to be forced, for you to be innocent, and for you to be robbed of money when you grow up because you trusted everyone and didn’t verify how things get done. Wanting you to think like sheep, following everyone, with small lives, small salaries, and slaves to the life they were given and not the one they tamed or forged. For you not to write, which is the greatest source of knowledge because is where one builds the answers. For you not to know history because you have never read it, but for what comes out in the news to be gospel. For you to marry people without ambition, both professionally and humanely. For this then I must

  • Not surround you with books

  • Not read (because then you won’t have the example)

  • Let you watch all the television you want

  • Not teach you to work but give you all the money they ask for

  • Not teach you what charity is, not take you to see the people you help

  • Not put you to work from a young age

  • Not make space for you to read and give you boring books that make you hate reading

  • Not explain the reasons for things

  • Not hug you, kiss you, or tell you I love you

  • Not let you see us work

  • Not celebrate your achievements

  • Not teach you the sweet side of sacrifices

  • Not encourage you to play sports

  • Give you phones before the age of 15

  • Not let you be children, play, and have time to have fun

  • Not teach you that there is a time for everything

  • Not teach you the dark side of human beings

  • Not teach you the wonderful side of human beings

People, THIS IS HARD. I don’t want everyone to think otherwise. If it were, we would not be successful. Our competition is also making mistakes, don’t worry about that, this is also the reason why we are being successful. I know you sometimes feel that we are not, because all of the shit that often hits the fan, but our Sales and renewals are there to contradict that thought.

With that being said, I bring this up because helping the Product Team is a task for everyone. We must narrow down issues and put them through the lens of the Hero. And sometimes is the Guide’s job to say no the Hero, to say, focus on shit that matters.

  • Can I have green buttons?

  • No, focus on discounts, or focus on how fast can you do x job.

Very soon, CSMs will have to narrow down their critical cases to 10. Our Implementation team should also pass and track escalated critical cases for them!

I’m super proud of the speed gained by our Product Development Team in the last few months, but both technical and PM teams need more focused feedback from the teams closer to the customer. At the same time, PMs need to pay attention to usability; after all, 99% of every call or email written to a CSM or Implementation should be an unnecessary call or email.

We need to keep in mind that we don’t want to be the Heroes of this story, we are the guides, and the client after using us, should feel transformed. Anything shorter is a sucky product.

I wanted to bring this so we can all see our jobs through a different lens. We should strive to provide magical moments that transform our Heroes, so they, at the same time, produce less frustration for our implementation and support team.

With Love,

Antonio

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