Pressure and Release

Freya will not be told.

She’s a big mare with opinions, and I’m standing in the round pen with no rope, no halter, and a cup of coffee I should have left in the truck. Liberty training works like this. You ask with your body. You add a little pressure. The second she gives you even a sliver of what you asked for, you take the pressure away.

The release is the lesson.

It took me a long time to understand that. I kept asking harder. Bigger steps, more energy, a whole performance. Freya watched me the way you watch weather you plan to wait out.

I think about that round pen a lot in pitch meetings.

A founder sits down and the pressure is already on. They want money. I’m deciding. Everyone in the room knows it. And most of what I need to learn in that hour shows up when the pressure comes off. When I ask something they can’t answer and they say so. When the deck ends and we’re just talking, about the co-packer who disappeared or the buyer who finally called back.

Some founders keep performing. The release comes and they fill it with more pitch. Some exhale. They tell me the number that keeps them up at night. They ask me a real question back.

I back the ones who exhale.

The market is doing its own version of this right now. Capital got pickier this year, and the rounds that are closing look a lot like a horse that has stopped performing. A French raw pet food brand called Qru raised €1.65M after it was already in about 300 stores. A supplement company called Ace Blend raised $9.9M to run clinical trials on its own claims. Neither is a story about a story. Both are about what’s there when nobody is pushing.

I used to think my job in a pitch was to push. Ask the hard question. Apply the pressure. Watch how they hold up.

That’s part of it. The rest is knowing when to step back and let the founder show you who they are.

Freya came to me on her own one morning. I had stopped trying by then.

That was probably the point.