Evaluating Founders

At the earliest stages there is rarely enough business to evaluate, so investors evaluate people. The useful signals are less about pedigree and more about evidence: what has this team already built with limited resources, how quickly do they learn from contact with customers, and how precisely can they describe why their approach is different.

Founder-market fit is the specific version of this. Founders who have lived inside the problem tend to reach the right answer faster because they waste less time on wrong ones.

Beware of pattern matching that substitutes familiarity for evidence. The most common failure in early-stage evaluation is mistaking a founder who presents like previous winners for a founder who is likely to win.