I had a conversation this week with a senior allocator at a large institutional LP that took a line I usually use as a mission statement and turned it into something closer to a public health diagnosis. I told the LP that I’m trying to build “the most analog firm in a digital world,” and she didn’t interpret it as cute branding. She treated it like a recommended treatment to a global crisis. Remote work. Living on screens. Being alone in homes and apartments for long stretches. Spending our attention on apps engineered to keep our nervous systems on edge.
Her point was simple and heavy at the same time: the way a lot of us are operating right now is probably not healthy, and we will likely see strange downstream effects from it. Not just burnout. Not just anxiety. Real physical stuff. The kind of outcomes that make you stop using the word “lifestyle” and start using the word “risk.”
What hit me is how quickly “connecting” with others has drifted into “performing.” Adults do it all day.
Zoom calls that feel like webinars.
Group chats that replace real conversation.
Quick voice notes that keep things moving but never really let anything settle.
Even the way we FaceTime now can feel like a broadcast. I’ve watched it with my son. He’s seven, and when he calls his grandparents or aunts, half the time he’s not even catching up. He’s in webinar mode. He wants to show them tricks from his media class. He screen shares. He’s presenting.
It’s funny.
And it’s also a mirror.
Because we’re training a generation (and ourselves) to equate connection with demonstration.
It’s less of that slow back-and-forth where you learn someone’s mood. Where you sit in a little silence. Where you ask the second question after the first answer. I’m not blaming him. It’s probably generational. Going through Covid as a young child. Having access to devices early. Being raised by millennials.
But I’m hopeful, especially when I look at the success of a consumer product company a friend invested in called Tin Can. The pitch, as I understand it, is almost laughably old school, where kids ages roughly 5 to 12 want a regular phone experience again. Not a smartphone. Not another feed. Something closer to what we had with corded phones. Just calling people. Just talking. The fact that something like that is “ripping” says more than a thousand op-eds. It suggests the demand for unoptimized connections is not romantic nostalgia. It is a market signal. We miss being with people, and we miss being reachable in a way that does not require us to perform.
The LP also made a second point that connected the human health angle to the private markets angle in a way that should make every fund manager lean in.
Private markets are network-based. Trust-based. Pattern recognition-based. The comfort of home, and your social bubble, is real. But deals do not get made at home. Early stage, especially. The work is embodied. It is eye contact. It is shared context. It is the after, not just the meeting. And if you believe, like I do, that attention is the scarcest resource now, then the analog path is not a retreat from the future. It is a way to compete for attention without contributing to the fatigue of constant digital interaction. Boots on the ground, done thoughtfully, is suddenly differentiated again.
So when I say “most analog firm in a digital world,” I’m not just talking about notebooks, phone calls, and dinners. I’m talking about building a system that respects human limits and human biology. That is where good judgment lives. I’m talking about conversation as a craft, not content as a substitute. I’m talking about a life where I can do the work without frying my central nervous system. And a firm where founders feel something steady when they are around us.
If we are heading into a decade where the body keeps the score for how we lived through this screen era, then the contrarian play might be simple: do as the Gen Z cool kids say, “touch grass.” Or used to say it. I’m old enough now that the slang changes while I’m still using it. Which is basically that SNL bit in real time.
But the advice holds.
Touch grass.
Get in rooms.
Talk with people, not at them.
Build trust where the algorithm cannot follow you.
with gratitude,
e