#73 Mercedes Bent of Lightspeed: My Favorite Books, Tools, Habits, and More | 20 Minute Playbook

In Episode #73, we deconstruct Mercedes Bent's peak performance playbook—from her favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on her life. Mercedes is the Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. We cover shortening the learning cycle, managing through uncertainty, and cultivating happiness. “As the world is changing faster and faster, one of the things we need as any professional to get better at is to improve the speed at which you are able to learn about new things, because the world ain't changing any slower.” – Mercedes Bent EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED) https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/mercedes-bent-outlier-academy-show-notes  FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/mercedes-bent-outlier-academy-transcript  CHAPTERS In this episode, we deconstruct Mercedes Bent's peak performance playbook—from her favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on her life. In it we cover: (00:00:00) – Introduction (00:01:22) – The path from working in startups to funding them (00:03:44) – Connecting the undertones of pop culture to investing (00:06:09) – Managing through uncertainty, being knowable, and networking (00:09:26) – Shortening the learning cycle and cultivating happiness (00:12:16) – Learnings from two Masters’ degrees (00:17:55) – Communicating with founders through Discord, Telegram, and WhatsApp (00:19:47) – Living with no regrets and wisdom from Beyonce ABOUT MERCEDES BENT Mercedes Bent is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where she focuses on consumer and FinTech early-stage businesses, including forage, Stori, Flink, and Outschool. She was previously Vice President at Upload, a news and education provider in the VR space, General Manager and Product Manager at General Assembly, and a Financial Analyst at Goldman Sachs. She has degrees from Harvard and Stanford GSB, and served on the Board of Birthright AFRICA. 💌 FREE NEWSLETTER https://www.outlieracademy.com/newsletter 🎙 LISTEN ON iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/outlier-academy/id1523851182 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/58edVNgqaPNaCSGSxM6pef?si=88f37a5d20434775 Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1523851182 ABOUT OUTLIER ACADEMY Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Website: https://www.outlieracademy.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/outlieracademy ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts. Website: https://www.danielscrivner.com Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/danielscrivner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices