The Hidden Tax of Short-Term Thinking

I hadn’t planned to write about this, BUT the sheer volume of chancing tactics lately, especially from otherwise brilliant people , has become impossible to let slide.

In most things in life: The most consequential rules are the ones no one writes down. However, I am wondering if we should begin to?
For example; Don’t take the last piece unless you offered it first - It’s not about the food. It’s about signalling that you’re thinking of others.
This post, is about these types of people, those who confuse genuine opportunism and chancery.

The consequential rules in the venture ecosystem, You won’t find them in term sheets, pitch decks, or LP agreements — yet they govern everything. They are embedded in trust, reputation, and the delicate social fabric that makes startup ecosystems function.

Too many promising founders and fund managers forget this. They optimise for tactics over trust, mistaking proximity for partnership, and behaving as if relationships are assets to extract value from, rather than ecosystems to cultivate with care.

It reminds me of the Tragedy of the Commons — that concept from ecology and economics where individuals, acting in their own short-term self-interest, end up depleting shared resources to the detriment of the whole group. In this case, the shared resource is goodwill. Once depleted, it’s difficult to restore.

I think of Sarah — a technically brilliant founder I met last year. Her startup was doing foundational work in AI infrastructure. Impressive pitch. Sharp mind. Still, something felt off. Every interaction came across as transactional. Investors were not treated as collaborators, allies, or long-term partners. They were viewed as chess pieces, to be manoeuvred into position and captured at the right moment.

Then there is Michael, a GP raising his second fund. Charismatic, well-networked, and increasingly impatient. He treated every coffee like a campaign — name-dropping just enough to imply influence, reframing anecdotes to suggest momentum. He requested introductions frequently, often without context, and seldom followed through with thoughtfulness. Over time, this left a string of mildly bruised relationships. There was no scandal, just a quiet accumulation of friction. People walked away feeling slightly used.

Neither Sarah nor Michael committed a catastrophic error. That is what makes their stories cautionary, not explosive. The damage was not dramatic — it was cumulative. A series of seemingly minor choices that slowly undermined trust. Like entropy in a closed system, relationships drift towards disorder when care isn’t actively applied. Left unchecked, things fall apart.

There’s a line from Rilke that echoes in my mind: "The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens." In venture, the most enduring relationships are not engineered through manipulation, but revealed through honest collaboration over time. Trust doesn’t scale with hustle. It compounds with consistency.

The tragedy lies in their potential. Both are intelligent and capable. However, they were playing the wrong game.

[A candid side]

If you are trying to raise capital from me; I care about the emotional residue you leave behind after every interaction. - that is what compounds. That is what builds or breaks our relationship. Your personal reputation, like gravitational force, is invisible yet inescapable. It shapes the orbits of opportunity - pulling some closer, pushing others away. Lose it, and you find yourself drifting in a vacuum where no signal lands and no warmth returns.

There is a crucial distinction worth remembering:

A chancer sees the short-term win.

A builder sees the whole game.

Only one of them gets invited back to play.