In his book, The Startup Game, Pops wrote:

“Wise venture capitalists—the ones who earn a solid reputation—are used to working on a handshake. They willingly share the ever-present risk of failure and are not in it for quick gain through stock flipping. These individuals are careful, because each investment should have the potential to lead to a long- term, successful relationship. They are also careful because their reputation is inextricably tied to each company they back. Any company may fail, and many do. In and of itself, that is not a big deal. But how should venture capitalists behave in the wake of that failure?

Are they calm and consistent in good times and bad? Is their advice helpful? Are their contacts useful? Do they follow through on their commitments? If they don’t get consistently good grades in all of these areas, they won’t last long in what is a surprisingly tight-knit community.”

When my grandfather’s friend George Shultz turned 100, he wrote that the most important lesson he learned was: “Trust is the coin of the realm.”

This should be the mantra of all VCs. Magic happens when trust is highest.

Being trustworthy means your word is your bond. This is true for both investors and entrepreneurs, and it’s essential to all good relationships.

One of my favorite parts of having breakfast with my grandfather is the respect he gives others. Continuing to eat at Buck’s, week after week, year after year, is one small, iterative way to build trust. Everyone knows him by name. The same waiters fight to wait on him, and they’ll give him his pick of tables every time we walk in.

This is a massive topic that we could talk about until the end of time. Here are a few notes on how it appears in VC:

• You can’t fake trust. It’s about being true to your own personal set of values, every day. It’s about saying what you’re going to do and doing it—enough times that people believe it will always happen. Trust is the long game.

• I have seen many investors come and go, breaking the rule of trust. They’re flashes in the pan. The best VCs are built for endurance.

• It’s about keeping the promises you’ve made to yourself as much as to others. Pops would always say, “Let’s make both sides of the table happy.” Soon enough, people learned they could trust him to actually do that. That’s how he was able to do thousands of deals over the course of his life, and how he was able to keep doing deals until he was 95 (and he still does deals).

• We have a rule at Boost VC: Compound trust. Get rich slowly. Long, slow money is the game, and it comes
  from compounding trust. You’re not compounding money. You’re compounding trust. Because of that trust, you will be welcomed. When you have that trust everywhere you go, you will be unbeatable in our business because people know they can depend on you. You are delivering on the promise that you will work hard on the companies, be there for the companies, and spend time on the companies. You don’t have to be right all the time. You only have to be right once or twice, but you always have to be trustworthy. That’s how this business is.

• Build trust through mutual experience.

• Give trust to people who haven’t earned it yet. Give them the chance to earn it.

• Trust isn’t a flash in the pan. You can commit overnight, but you can’t build trust overnight. People often say things like “look at that founder who raised $25M in 2 weeks!” But they did NOT raise $25M in 2 weeks. They raised $25M over 5 years, and it looks like 2 weeks because the trust had already been built over 5 years. My grandfather has always known this.

• Broadly, trust allows you to move more quickly through deals and workflows.

• Stay true to your word. Founders need to trust you to stay true to your word.

• If you say you’re going to do a deal, do the deal.

• Your LPs need to trust you to not run away with their money.

• Your founders need to have the integrity to build trust in the market. And in order to scale, founders need to trust the people on their teams to be better than they are at everything.

It’s human nature that people will live up to the trust you give them. If you invest money and say, “I believe in you, and I think you will make this company an incredible success,” you’re showing your trust, and the entrepreneur will do whatever she/he can to prove you right.

On the other hand, if you hold the money and say, “You better not blow this,” you’re telling the entrepreneur that you don’t trust them. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: they may end up being untrustworthy because they don’t get a good trusting vibe from you, and you don’t get it from them.

The job itself is so simple. You raise capital from people with money; you invest in founders who require money; you return more capital than you raised. That’s the job. But these are big bets, and there’s a lot on the line.

It’s about more than money—it’s about the actualization of human endeavor; it’s about how the world’s most brilliant people spend their precious time; it’s about whether people in the future will live better lives than ours. That’s why trust is more valuable than money.