Working in venture changed how my brain works—or at least made me more aware of how I should use it.

Not because of what they were investing in, but because of how they think.

I got to watch some truly sharp VCs at work. They weren't just collecting tips or following trends. They weren't listening for signal just to chase it. They were building systems—mental models—to collect, ingest, and leverage information. Structures that helped them make sense of the world.

Every datapoint had to earn its place inside that model. If it fit, it sharpened their view. If it didn't, it challenged something deeper.

You'd see it in meetings. Someone would reference a paper, share a founder's take, or introduce a fresh angle. And instead of saying "interesting," the response would be:

"Does this change how we think about X?" "Does this fit or break our current belief?" "What does this tell us about timing, defensibility, or risk?"

That was the loop: find new input, bring it back, debate it, see where it fits, see what it breaks. Constant model updates.

Learning as a Contact Sport

Every partner meeting felt like a mix of research seminar and sparring match. People didn't bring ideas to defend—they brought them to test. No one needed to be right immediately. They just wanted to get closer to truth, eventually.

It wasn't passive learning. It was structured thinking under pressure.

A framework. A system. Scaffolding that made the next round of learning sharper.

They had to be calibrated. The stakes were high. And you could feel that seriousness in how they operated.

I didn't always follow the topic. But I saw the process enough to appreciate the discipline behind it. That stuck with me.

What People Get Wrong

There's this image of VCs as hype merchants or lucky guessers. I'm sure some are.

But what I saw wasn't reactive. It wasn't trend-chasing. It was more like triangulation.

They would run every new piece of information through a lens:

What does this change about our current model? Is this noise or signal? What do we need to update? What should we go learn next?

I watched people reshape their understanding in real time because of one founder's insight. Not reactively—but methodically. Like tuning an engine.

It made me respect the craft. The intellectual rigor. The way ideas were held lightly enough to evolve, but seriously enough to be pressure-tested.

Why It Still Sticks

I think about that environment a lot. The urgency of updating. The discipline of asking better questions. The willingness to be wrong—but fast enough to learn.

That mindset reshaped how I process things. Not in a business sense. In a mental one.

It wasn't about knowing more. It was about learning better.