A Snake in My Truck

Yesterday I drove to Albuquerque with a snake in my truck.
Not a metaphor. An actual snake.

I got in the front seat, saw something dart under the backseat, and thought: mouse. Looked under the seat. Not a mouse. Went around to the other side to get a look and assess whether this was something that could kill me. Lucky for me, it slithered out into the front seat so I got a good look, and it was most likely not poisonous.

So I did what any reasonable person does when the data isn’t cooperating: made a call. Bull snake. Definitely. Probably. The harmless kind that just looks like the dangerous kind. I was fairly sure.

Naturally I tried to fix it myself. Grabbed the snake by the tail to pull it out before we hit the highway. It had other plans, wedged itself onto something under the seat, and would not let go.

Here’s the thing. I had exactly one window to get down there and pick up this new horse trailer. So I looked at the snake, looked at the clock, and did the math every early-stage investor eventually does: I cannot fully de-risk this, I am not getting more information in the next five minutes, and the window closes whether I act or not. So I let go. It crossed to the front, disappeared somewhere up front for a while, and I kept driving, then reappeared under the passenger floor mat and repositioned itself a couple more times over the hour-long drive, just to keep things interesting.

In Albuquerque, I picked up the trailer and drove home. The snake, last I checked, still lives in my truck, working its way through the floor mats one at a time.

That’s most weeks in early-stage CPG investing. You almost never get the deal where every risk is quantified and every variable is known. You get a founder, a market window, and something moving under the floor mat you can’t fully see. You assess what you can, you make the best call available with the information in front of you, and you drive.

The trailer’s home. The snake’s still in the truck. Sometimes good enough certainty is the whole game.

I sent my dear friend and colleague Angela May McElwee the video with a hilarious text exchange and she turned our text exchange into the next hit song “Snake Uber”, which honestly feels like the best use of AI this week.