Kanyi Maqubela

Kanyi is a Managing Partner at Kindred Ventures, which launched Kindred Ventures I in 2019. Previously, he served as a Partner at Collaborative Fund, where he was an early advisor to Tala and Walker & Co., and a board member at Buffer, Camino Financial, Spruce, and True Link.

On his morning routine.

I’m usually up around 6 because one of three things has happened.

One, my wife has already left for work and attempted to do so quietly. She’s a doctor and keeps unusual hours. Two, my son wants to be tucked back in. Three, I finally realize the answer to something I’d been thinking about before bed.

The first I thing I do after I wake up is prep almond butter toast, oatmeal, or a yoghurt and fruit for my son. Then he’ll want to play trains or Legos.

It’s really the best way to start my day and anchors me on the most important thing in my life — playing with my kid.

Once he’s settled, I’ll dive into a bit of reading.

I’ll check Twitter (I’m an addict), Slack to make sure I know what deliverables my team asked for overnight, and Gmail, which I try to put off the furthest.

My email represents other people’s priorities imposed upon me, not my own, so I try to resist it as long as possible.

On spending time alone.

Before quarantine, I was almost always walking to work.

I’d be really intentional about not listening to stimulating sounds like music or podcasts for that 30 minute block.

Allowing myself that cognitive breathing room enables a creative state where I can think clearly and purely.

I also block off about two hours every few days, shutting off email and all notifications to focus on reading or writing.

Increasingly, it entails writing for an audience of one (myself).

Sometimes it’s a reflection on an investment that we made or a new financing strategy. It can also be as simple as meditating on the power of forgiveness or the nature of patience.

This block of time is intended to create more accountability for my thoughts and with my stated preferences, so I make space for my revealed preferences to come out in writing.

On protecting his health.

If I’m not feeling well, I lean on three methods to reboot my system. They’re all very mechanical and oriented on the belief that my body is one structure.

First, I’ll sleep. Even I need to take melatonin or nap or cancel meetings, I’ll just fucking sleep. Sleep is horribly underrated. 

Second, I’ll sweat. The endorphin release of exercise will literally change your biochemistry, which will in turn change your neurochemistry and how you approach problem-solving. 

Third, I’ll incorporate a combination of deep breathing, praying, or meditating. This method enables a higher degree of emotional and psychological calm.

Whenever I’m panicked or stressed, I’ve habituated myself to default to sleep, sweat, or a deep breath. 90% of the time that works.

On juggling priorities.

I’m a new parent and a new fund manager, so there’s a lot of competing priorities for my time.

I have to be extremely regimented or the world’s priorities will manifest on me, instead of doing what I want, in the order I believe is most productive.

A lot of that organization is on my devices. I do all of my best thinking, for better and for worse, on my phone. It's an additional appendage at this point.

While Gmail holds my random access memory, my Notes app is a lighter, lower fidelity way to compile ideas that aren’t yet fully baked.

On his note-taking framework.

My system changes depending on what I’m writing about.

If I’m taking a pitch, I’ll jot thoughts down on my iPad Notes app, as well as directly into our CRM while tagging my partner in the process. 

The CRM note taking is critical because we often have to react or move quickly in a hive mind operation, so tagging my partner in real-time is really productive for our workflow. I know the dual processing is a bit clunky, but it gets the job done. 

On his role as an investor.

I view the job of an early-stage investor as a lab manager.

The seed stage is similar to a business science experiment, where you’ll take a hypothesis and apply it to a real-life scenario. Then, you see if it plays out in the way you expected or if anything strange or surprising happens.

It’s incredibly helpful to have someone at this stage who can help design that experiment, remind you of the basics, and check your calculus.

To extend the analogy, after helping set up, you have to let the experimenter set up their instrumentation and do their own work. 

On asking the right questions.

When you invest in a company, knowing how to divide the universe so that you can ask the right questions based on the scenario you encounter makes all the difference in the world. 

The best coaches are the ones asking insightful questions that expose a new vector of thinking, or that force you to evaluate a concept with fresh eyes.

It’s tough, but overwhelmingly important, to maintain a beginner’s mindset when you’re in the weeds.

For any constructive relationship, you can’t separate tactics and emotions, they’re fundamentally baked into each other.

As an investor partner, it’s your job to support both.

On teaching ambition.

I don’t think urgency can be taught, but I do think ambition can be coached by radically adjusting someone’s mindset and expanding their field of vision. 

To give you an example, of one of our portfolio companies once told me they’re targeting 100 new users this month.

As a thought experiment, I asked, what if you shoot for 10,000?

After that week brainstorming how to get to that number, they came back and told me its impossible. But, they discovered that 1,000 new users was doable.

That’s how I try to influence someone’s orientation and ambition, but it’s not necessarily urgency.

You just have to separately underwrite for urgency when you invest. 

To that extent, I look for founders with sticktoitiveness, or some level grit and gumption to just keep pushing. If you have those qualities, you’ll be able to figure shit out, find a way forward, and propose solutions in the likelihood of failure. 

That attitude is what I’m looking for.

On his nightly routine.

My routine is twofold. First, it involves some combination of politics, twitter, and TikTok. Unfortunately, that’s just the truth.

Then I’ll switch over to reading, often biographies, sci-fi, or pop science.

It’s usually not the book I was reading the night before, I love jumping into the middle of something new and just seeing what happens when I get there. 

I’ve read a large number of books but finished an amusingly small portion of them, and I kind of like it that way.

I tend to have around ten books in a stack next to me. It’s really all over the map.

More recently, I re-visited The Three-Body Problem, Glen Weyl’s Radical Markets, and Tyler Cowen's The Complacent Class.