Did You Hear The One About The Starfish?

I was listening to a conversation between Chris Sacca and Ted Seides the other day, on Ted’s excellent podcast Capital Allocators.

Chris Sacca is famous for having the best VC batting average since Ted Williams and then suddenly retiring, only to unretire a few years later to found Lowercarbon Capital with his equally-impressive wife, Crystal English Sacca.

Their goal: Invest in climate tech companies and buy us time to unfuck the planet.

You can see the appeal.

I have always appreciated Chris’s candor and enthusiasm. But when Ted asked how Chris and Crystal manage to balance work (unfucking the planet) and being around for their young kids, there was one line that stuck out to me, and it was when Chris replied (and I’m paraphrasing here):

“You know, the answer to why you tell your kids you can’t hang out right now better be really fucking good.”

That one stuck with me. And here’s why.

It stuck with me because I’m thankful, proud, and privileged to be a dad who is home for dinner and bedtime virtually every night, and it kills me when I can’t be, whatever the reason. My kids didn’t notice my occasional absences when they were toddlers — toddlers barely have object permanence. And when they’re teenagers, they’ll probably give even less of a shit when I’m MIA — if not celebrate my absence.

But right now, when they’re most aware and most desire my full attention — my time — to justify a late-night at the office means I better be on the cusp of curing some goddamn disease.

That’s how important my time with them is — to me, and to them.

And yet — I’m definitely not curing a disease. Not directly, at least. That’s not how my brain works, or how my biology grades went.

That’s also not my job. My job is to help all of you understand and unfuck our rapidly changing world, together, through context and Action Steps. I call it Compound Action, which is just a catchy way of saying we stand on the shoulders have the millions who’ve done it before us, for everyone to come after us.

So when I have to miss dinner or can’t play catch or Barbies or catch with Barbies, it’s usually because I have to finish up an essay like this one, or tag-in to some policy call.

The kids are bummed — I can see it — but they finally kind of understand what I do, so they’ll (gently) roll their eyes and go back to their sweet potatoes. They will, in all of their grace, forgive me. It doesn’t happen often.

But here’s the thing —even though they’re increasingly cognizant and proud of what I do and why I do it, and understanding more of the world around them, some part of me still believes they’re always going to remember me missing dinner, not why I missed it.

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