YouSaid · the spoken record

John Kim

lines on the record: 89
first: 2026-05-25
most recent: 2026-05-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Descending. It can be righteous. I need to be able to have a phrase to tell people that allows them to justify what I've done. The most famous phrase ever is if the glove does not fit, you must acquit. I explain why I made the decision that I did, because I'm not trying to find the person guilty or innocent. I'm trying to adjudicate the law. The law says beyond a reasonable doubt, glove didn't fit. That's actually the golden rule. If I gave anybody one single thing in a fundraise that you want is to be able to give them one phrase that they can repeat to other people why they want to do this and allows the complications to be very simple. Track record and the performance characteristics, that's generally facts. That's the logos ethos pathos of dynamics in formula form. If you're in a debate when people get righteous, you know that the debate's over. Righteousness means your ego is committed to the emotion and usually you're bringing”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Complications of the story, they divide the potential. Why? Well, first, complications are what gut trust. Just guts it. You're like, okay, first I have to do this and I do that. Or this person left the firm. Or no, I don't have a successor. Yeah, there's a lawsuit against us like, oh gosh, I don't trust you. The second is there's a real piece of fear that says, I trust and believe that the track record is good. It's good enough for me. The differentiation makes sense to me. I like it. But the complications make it hard for me to explain this to somebody. And I don't have agency over the decision. I must explain to a group of people. Oftentimes this group of people use the investment process to create a power dynamic within the firm. That's where you get to debate things. That's where you're allowed to have a safe space. to criticize things. It can get personal. Anybody's been an investment committee. It can be...”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“you show up into those communities. Everybody says, well, look, it belonged to a talented community and you want to look special. Everybody else is special. The head of the physics department, they had the English department. They're all very special people. The head of the endowment needs to be special. That's almost always the case. So specialness, that can also be tied to differentiation. Now let's talk about complications.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Track record, I trust that you've done something in the past, therefore you can do it in the future. That's logic. Differentiation, that's a little bit more intuitive. That's more like, do I believe you're really different? Because I have to believe it. Second, do I believe it's important to be different to what you're doing with operating partners or technology? And then do I want it? In other words, almost everybody investing money has a portfolio. They want that portfolio to have a diversification of different things. And at some level, they just want to be interested. You're going to make money by doing something different than everybody else does. That's an intuition. That's not a logic, actually, but it's very powerful. It can also be emotional for a lot of people. They like to be special. And this is a huge thing. Specialness, I find this to be true with endowments. Endowments love to feel special. They are very special and it makes sense because if you're an endowment, you sit in a school, usually if it's got a lot of money, has got very talented people.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm doing this because I believe in, and by the way, it doesn't have to be super high fallutin. I just believe that, let's say, mid-market bioinformatics, that there is such an important role for increasing efficiencies in the economy, because if we don't do that, then we're just going to be hollowed out as a nation. Standing for something is always difficult because differentiation is key to selling something, but with great differentiation comes great sacrifice. If your why, as famously said by Simon Sinek, doesn't cost you anything, then it's just branding or just a slogan. The essence of the equation I call the law of differentiation, your track record plus your differentiation divided by the complexity of your story is generally how much money you can raise. Your track record plus your differentiation divided by the complications of your story. Your track record is logic. This just happened. And that's the belief versus trust. If you've got a great”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is the key. There are lots of different ways to argue why that is the right thing. Simon Sinek talks about this very beautifully, saying, well, actually, the hindbrain governs the emotions and values and the frontal lobe governs the logic. Therefore, we know that the hindbrain does not have language. The frontal lobe is created to actually interpret feelings from the hindbrain. That's a rationalization is. Rationalization is you take something that is emotional and you create basically an artificial construct that allows you to hold what was once not rational. And we call it rationalization. So rationalization ties to every single discussion of sales, yet it is the thing that is the output of the ethics and emotions. When you're talking to somebody, you hope that you're able to sit down and say, hey, you want to know the why I'm doing something.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But here's the trick. Every argument, if you can win two of the three, you're in pretty good shape. Here's where everybody gets it wrong. Everybody focuses on the logos, the logic. That is almost never where you want to start. You have to be logical. But you want to address the person's emotional desires for what they want and then their ethical or intuitive”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're in the meeting, there are two things that you're always looking for. First, you're looking for what is the way I'm going to persuade you and then what are your insecurities? Those are about you. First, let's talk about the persuasion piece. It's one of these things where Aristotle writes about this 300 BC, that in order to convince somebody of something, you must use logos ethos pathos. Logic, logos, pathos, emotion, so empathy, sympathy, compassion, pathos, and then ethos. ethics or your values.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would you come in knowing there are these four things that you have to engage with to get the conversation going? You also mentioned in this Copernicus way of looking at the world, it's not about you, it's about them. How do you think about addressing what the needs are of the prospect?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hopefully, I stick the landing. I'd go on because there's so much to be said about the process of having a conversation. A sales pitch is a process. If you go through these processes, establish rause, establish credibility, gain attention, generate interest, discuss needs, present your solution, and then close. You'll find that even social interactions work this way. You go to a party, establish rapport, hey, how you doing? You know what? You look great tonight. Gain attention. Did you see the Knicks are just killing it now? And then you say, I was just at the game, you're just at the game, now I'm interested. And so you'll move into, what are you doing this weekend? That wasn't a super great example, but it is the same process. It's just different words around it.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This video you've seen this video, something that you can actually have a prop, have something to talk about, but nowhere can talk about before you go. Then you have to have the mentality, this is a social tax. You live in Connecticut, you want to be accepted by your community. It's totally fine. Then stop thinking about it. It's a tax. I don't think about my taxes. And if I don't like it, I move. It works like a charm. Here's the net benefit. If I know generally what I'm going to talk about when I go into a party, I remember everybody's name I met. The reason why you don't remember somebody's name is, they name's Ted. And I'm thinking, what am I going to say next? Oh, shoot. I don't know what your name is. That's almost always what happens. If I know, oh gosh, you know, Ted, I'm going to talk about, or I knew you were going to be at the party or something, I'm going to talk about your podcast. I'm going to talk about the last guest if I know you're going to be at the party. If I don't know you're at the party, I'll probably have a question that will be relevant. That'll be somewhat interesting.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What do I need to do? I probably need to come back with credibility. And so I'll tell the general product, why don't you tell them about that deal that did really, really well, that actually sounds like this that you're actually pitching, something that's credible. Then you have to have a closing. One of the things that I recommend, whenever I walk into a meeting, 100% of the time, I have two things that I will do, and this is price's birth. I will know what my first thing I'm going to say is. Then I know what my closing objective is. Now you have to be quick to give that up if something else, but I know where I'm going with the conversation. That is important because then you can shape the conversation. I've got a friend of mine who was talking about cocktail parties. He hates cocktail parties. He's a brilliant guy. He lives in Connecticut, and cocktail party scene. It's not his scene. So I said, look, what you want to do is pre-program your discussion. That's it. Have something on your phone that you could show people.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make sure it happens because they've got to have some liability so that clears your mind. Then establish credibility. Say something about yourself. Say something about what's going on. Say something they go, oh, there's a reason for me to be here. Ah, you're credible. That's the authority piece of it. Then you want to gain their attention. Okay, well, you're credible. You've done stuff before. What's so interesting about you? You better say something interesting. Then you want to make sure you gain their attention. Gaining attention can happen in any different way. Gaining attention can simply be the way you sound, the way you look, the way you smell. It could be the way your pitch books look. It just happens to look different. You have to do all four of those things. You can do them in any order, but you make sure you do all those four things. And then you start to actually sell. Sometimes you don't get to do that, but then I'll always come back and then say, okay, let me establish some credibility here. And I see or feel in the meeting, oh, I can see some doubt here.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Left, you've got your own life, and that's the whole idea of the Copernican theory of selling. When I walk in the room, the whole world is you. I literally only exist in your mind. My existence, and this is actually very meditative, the whole idea that we make up our own realities, our own mind. The whole idea is, therefore, I need to establish rapport. I need to say, hey, let's change the setting, hopefully makes it a little bit charming. Sometimes you just talk about the weather. I know it sounds silly, but today happens to be a beautiful day. Well, talk about it if you want. If you've got something else you can talk about, it's particularly worthwhile if you walk into somebody's office and just pick out something in the office to talk about. That happens all the time. Very few times we say, okay, great. Thanks for meeting me. Let's just jump to business. That is a terrible way to start because they're not paying attention. If that happens, just run with it, but then later make sure you charm them.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are two things about being in the room that are super important. One is the structure of the meeting. The other is the persona that you're bringing in. The structure of the meeting is very important, but the persona can be even more potent. First, I talk about the structure. Every meeting must start with four things. You must establish rapport. You must establish credibility. You have to gain their attention. You have to generate interest. And you have better do it fast. It's a conceit that when somebody walks into a meeting, they say, oh, well, you are meeting with me, and so I have all of your attention. No, you're doing something right before you met me, and you're going to be doing something right after you meet me. Because by definition, if you're not busy, you probably don't have any money. Of course you're busy because everybody wants your money. So it is completely arrogant to believe that you're not thinking of something before you come in the meeting and you're not stressed about something else.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I said, hey, would you like to meet these people? And they said, well, Kimmer, how much do you know about these guys? Nothing. A friend of mine like, well, why would you waste my time? The only way I will meet them is a favor to you. No, I'm doing a favor for somebody I don't even know. So Ted, you say, Kimmer, I've got these guys, you're friends with so-and-so at such that stay pension. Would you just introduce them? Sure, but if they take the meeting, and if they don't like the meeting even, now I owe that person a favor. And this person does not owe me anything. Or maybe they do owe me something, but people don't understand that reciprocity. So now, wow, I just mortgaged a favor when I could be using that favor for something more special for myself. That's the start of getting the meeting. Then once you're in the room, that's a totally different thing. We can talk about that if you'd like.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Potential investor. Well, if that person is credible either because that person happens to be successful artificial intelligence investor, or that person is somebody who is recognized as credible and smart but knows lilac sciences really well. For instance, if I leave a firm and”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you reach out to somebody, if you don't have a brand, if you happen to be one of the big major firms, if you have a brand which helps a lot. By the way, the brand in our industry can be personal brand or institutional brand. There are plenty of fundraisers, there are plenty of individuals or plenty of investors that have an exquisite personal brand. If you don't, then you're always better off getting referenced into somebody. One of the challenges is, this is a pro tip that I should never talk about anywhere. If I want somebody to help me get into an account, that individual's relationship with the person they need to contact, I don't need an intimacy between them. They don't have to be close friends. It does help, obviously. That person just has to be respected. If that person is respected, the second thing that has to happen is that person has to be credible. Let's say I want to have somebody to introduce my firm. Let's say I'm Lila Sciences to someone.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funds, you have to then persuade them. You have to pitch them. And then you have to close them. And closing is handling objections. It's all part of the selling process because the better you identify the marketplace, the better you qualify the marketplace, the quicker you contact the marketplace, the better your pitch sounds of the marketplace, the better you handle objections and close, the better your conversion ratio. The better you identify the largest investors and how they work versus the smallest investors, you then affect your bite size. The big sovereign wealth and pension plans act very differently than family offices or consultants. So that's the macro process. You can dial in the whole idea of the pipeline times conversion ratio times bite size is how much money you're going to raise. Then there's a specific way of saying, okay, how do I affect each one of these variables?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a process of raising money, and then there's a process of actually being in the sales meeting. And those are two separate things. The reason why it's called selling, selling is generally persuasion with a process. I can be persuasive, but I have no process. Nothing's going to happen. The macro process is your pipeline times your conversion ratio times the size of the contract or the bite size of the investment equals the amount of money you're going to receive as a sale or how much money you're going to raise. If you know that pipeline is the first piece, then you have to have a pipeline process. It's that simple. There are six different steps around it. Basically, you have to be able to identify who are the potential buyers. You have to then go contact them. Then you have to go qualify them and say, hey, are you in the market to invest in mid-market buyouts?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“run the other way, you're the one that got eaten by the bear. Conset is also can be insidious in terms of fear of missing out. Well, fear of missing out is a scarcity issue, but consensus can be really powerful. It's one of the most powerful tools at macro. If everybody's doing it, then you start to do it. I'll stop with this one statement about consensus. It also reflects the idea of moving through the adoption cycle of innovator to early adopter to early majority to late majority to laggard, that everybody's trying to make that early adopter to early majority leap and that leap is usually defined as trust. In other words, there's enough evidence now that people can trust that it works. And then the consensus is it works and now early majority comes in.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am like you, and you trust what you like. You trust what you're attracted to. And that's part of the human condition. Another rule was reciprocity. I do something for you. Then you'll tend to do something for me. Reciprocity tends to be at the core of all ethics if people didn't do things back for people, then we wouldn't be able to have community. If you think about how many times people feel like they've been wronged, then usually there's some reciprocal experience where they have not done to others as they wish they would have done to themselves. Then there's scarcity. You sometimes say, look, everybody's buying it. It's off the shelf or it's about to get off the shelf or I can't get it. And if I can't get something, then I say, look, I just trust it must work. The file is consensus. Consensus is, well, everybody's doing it. At some levels, these hardwired into the human condition, like consensus, if you're walking through the forest and all of a sudden a bunch of people are running the other way, and that's the consensus.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the part where I caution people because there are simple techniques to do that. There's a beautiful book by Robert Caldini in 1986 Ethical Persuasion, A Power of Persuasion. I've never met him, but he has been a guiding light for most people in persuasion for generations. And I believe the book is written to protect people from people who are trying to sell you things. He articulates six different ways that people do that. These six different things when you look at them, what they are, are ways for people to get past insecurities or to learn to trust you. So no particular order. The first one is authority. But authority, if I happen to have a PhD in science and I'd say something about science or I'm a medical doctor, I have authority. And so I say something that people are okay, I trust you. Next is consistency. If I'm always behaving a certain way, then I know that the next time I say I'll behave that way again, oh, I trust you. Then another one is liking. I like you. You like.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to get into accident that there's a professional driver, but I still buckle up because I don't trust that the system works. However, I don't buckle up in certain situations. I just trust it completely and implicitly. I don't strap myself into a bus when I get into a bus, even though they often seat belts there. If you can get somebody into a world where, gosh, you get them to trust you, you've gotten through a lot of insecurities. That feels pretty good.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you do that, what happens is you've reduced somebody's fear and you've seen them. And I promise that that person goes home a little happier, that person goes home a little bit more seen. So in the process of trying to get something to do something using persuasion, you have met them where they are and have helped them understand sometimes they don't understand their own cynicism. That's a pleasing feeling to them and it ends up being reflected back on yourself. It ties to the idea that when Somebody is persuading somebody, too many people try to get them to believe what they're saying is true. The fundamental truth is that's usually not where the sale falls down. Most people will believe that people are good investors. Most people will believe that the opportunity makes sense. They just don't trust the person. There's a big difference between belief and trust. The idea that I believe that the Uber that I took here is not”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's unbelievable. They'll say, you know what? I'll tell you what I'm pissed about. Blah, blah, blah. Last time somebody gave me a demonstration, it didn't work and I ended up paying for it. I lost all my money and I had an answer to my boss. Now you know exactly what the key is to sell. You don't have to convince them of the features, functions, and benefits or the wonderful opportunities they have in front of them. You need to convince them that they don't need to be scared and you can give them an opportunity. What if I could give you a train?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, oh, I use this service and it never works. I go to the airport and I know I'm going to have a difficult time with whatever service it is. Because you've had a bad experience. Or even worse, you've had an experience that's been harmful to you. When you're trying to sell something to somebody, try to persuade them, and all of a sudden they meet you with cynicism. I'd say 99% of people try to talk about the positive side of life and talk about all the great things and try to convince you and try to balance the energy. When the right answer is to sit down and say, I see you're pissed. Can you just give me a second, tell me what you're pissed about?”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's so many positive ways to think about persuasion. I believe that persuasion is desire minus fear. So what people want minus how scared they are. So many books on persuasion talk about how to stoke desire, how to get people interested. I think that that's very credible, very real. But I find that most of successful communication table stakes are actually to get past people's fears, their insecurities, their doubts, their cynicisms. The positive way you can use persuasion is that when you're in a meeting, this is a simple rule that I use, you meet someone who's very cynical. There are some people who just believe that the glass is half empty. That's their mode of operation. But then there are some people who are cynical, and you can hear charge in their voice. You can feel it. When that happens, it means they've been burned. It means they're scared of something.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You will never know if the person is going to react positively, so you have no choice but to be positive and go first. That sounds confusing, but in some ways it really is very elegant in what is a Taoist view of the world, which is it's filled with contradictions. You have to be able to hold those contradictions in place in order to be effective, particularly when you're talking to other people and try to figure out what they're thinking, how they're going to react, how they're going to answer questions, how they're going to change their minds.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The whole idea of the Tao was it was all about opposites, balance about dualities. There's so much about fundraising and persuasion that is about dualities, things that are completely not true, yet people believe them, the things that people hate, yet they're addicted to, the things that people don't want to do, yet they are compelled to do it all the time. What's the most amazing thing that you would see in so many professions, and you have to watch out for in sales is something called the Nash equilibrium, which is when In order for some positive outcome to happen, both people have to cooperate. But if you know the other person's not going to cooperate, then you don't cooperate, and then both people lose. That's a duality. That's the, well, now, on the one hand, I've got this energy that says, hey, look, I want to go be positive be first. And if I don't think you are going to actually reciprocate, then I shouldn't go positive and be first. At the same time,”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My interpretation of the DAO. So anybody who's listening to this, you can look, that's not Taoism. And I'm like, yes, it probably isn't.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started realizing some of the more emotional lessons that I learned and more of the more value lessons that I learned about how persuasion writ large actually is very powerful everywhere from your personal life to your professional life. I started writing about how the art of persuasion and the way you can use it to change people's minds can be used for good or for things that are not as productive. Those things have a real cost on your well-being and who you are and your character. So I wrote about that. That's why I decided to call it the Dow fundraising. I'm not a Taoist and I'm not somebody who is trying to be moralistic about it. Hopefully I try to be balanced about the idea that if you're going to learn something that has real skill effectiveness, then you've got to be careful in how you use it.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's probably met with the other after that. If you want to know how little you know about something, start writing about it. That's what happened to me. One of the things that I should get out in the open is I wrote the book as my farewell gift to the industry. I now run a artificial intelligence company called Lila Sciences, which has fundraising as a component to it. But I was finishing a big fundraiser, my last from General Catalyst, and I was feeling the urge to try something different, the last chapter of my life. The essence of the book, or where it would start was, is that I was going to teach a class. I was going to teach a class on fundraising at a school that I was affiliated with. This was basically the syllabus. Then I thought, I don't have time to teach the class, so I put out in a blog post. And a friend of mine read my blog post before I sent them out. Turn this into a book. So I wrote the book. The first half was lessons on fundraising. How do you fundraise? What are the techniques? What are the things you think about? Then as I started writing the book and I started realizing I'm moving out of the industry as my core professional.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the late 90s, I'd made the jump. There were very few of us in the industry at the time. From there, I quickly said, rather than being a placement agent, I should join the industry as a placement agent at Bank of America than Chase. I moved into being investor relations because I realized that the investor relations piece had more agency to it. They had more representation and felt like it had more identity. In 2000, I was an investor relations professional. There are very few investor relations professionals in the entire industry. Then, of course, it grew and grew and grew to a place where it is now where investor relations for many firms is a core function.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Start my career as a cash registered salesperson at IBM. If you want to learn how to sell, there's an area where you actually figure out how to sell because it's the cash register that IBM were selling back in the late 80s were way more expensive than the NCR or the Casio Cash Registers. You had to go door to door and try to figure out who's going to buy them and why. Fortunately, IBM had an exquisite training program. They trained us and trained, doesn't trained us. Eventually, I got pretty good at selling cash registers. I did well enough to make it to business school. And then when I got to business school, Everybody was going into banking and consulting. I guess somewhere in my life, I just want to be different than this. Instead of following that path, I just said, why don't I just stick to a career in sales? Then I went into sales and trading at Maryland, then a couple other Wall Street firms. Then one day I had an opportunity to move into fundraising with a friend of mine from business school had told me about this job going around to talk to pensions and endowments to invest in venture capital and private.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Positive response about my reply. That caused me some confusion about whether I should reply to their reply to my reply to their email. One thing I learned from the exercise is we really don't have to reply to email when it comes in. Knowing that others know I won't respond reduces my people-pleasing next. That's especially true when I get interrupted, like while listening to an episode of Capital Allocators. So if you're listening, ignore your email for a while. And if you do grab your phone to send an email, you may just want to reply that you're engrossed in the latest episode and need some time to thoughtfully reply. Yeah, that works for me. Thanks so much for spreading the word. Capital Allocators is brought to you by Alpha Cents. Something for you. Most AI tools. Very good at sounding Right. But can you actually trace it back to a”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If that happens, just run with it, but then later make sure you charm them. Make sure it happens, because they've got to have some likability so that clears your mind. Then establish credibility. Say something about yourself. Say something about what's going on. Say something that go, oh, there's a reason for me to be here. Ah, you're credible. That's the authority piece of it. Then you want to gain their attention. Okay, well, you're credible. You've done stuff before. What's so interesting about you? You better say something interesting. Then you want to make sure you gain their attention. Gaining attention can happen in any different way. Gaining attention can simply be the way you sound, the way you look, the way you smell. It could be the way your pitch books looks. It just happens to look different. You have to do all four of those things. You can do them in any order, but you make sure you do all those four things. And then you start to actually sell.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In your mind. My existence, and this is actually very meditative, the whole idea that we make up our own realities, our own mind. The whole idea is, therefore, I need to establish rapport. I need to say, hey, let's change the setting. Hopefully it makes it a little bit charming. Sometimes you just talk about the weather. I know it sounds silly, but today happens to be a beautiful day. Well, talk about it if you want. If you've got something else you can talk about, it's particularly worthwhile if you walk into somebody's office and just pick out something in the office to talk about. That happens all the time. Very few times we say, okay, great. Thanks for meeting me. Let's just jump to business. That is a terrible way to start because they're not paying attention.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The structure of the meeting is very important, but the persona can be even more potent. First, I talk about the structure. Every meeting must start with four things. You must establish rapport, you must establish credibility, you have to gain their attention, you have to generate interest, and you have better do it fast. It's a conceit that when somebody walks into a meeting, they say, oh, well, you are meeting with me, and so I have all of your attention. No, you're doing something right before you met me, and you're going to be doing something right after you meet me. Because by definition, if you're not busy, you probably don't have any money. Of course you're busy because everybody wants your money. So it is completely arrogant to believe that you're not thinking of something before you come in the meeting and you're not stressed about something else in your life. You've got your own life. And that's the whole idea of the Copernican theory of selling. When I walk in the room, the whole world is you. I literally only exist.”
2026-05-25 · Capital Allocators · Fundraising Mastery: The Tao of Kimmer – John Kim (EP.503) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source