Thank you for your insights, Abhi. I enjoyed the read.
I'm curious; at what point does it stop being about the VC imparting their guidance, knowledge and expertise before they decide a founder hasn't 'thought about building a product deeply' enough? How long is that piece of string?
Trust is an immeasurably powerful paradigm across the entire spectrum of human to human interaction. I would argue, the vast majority of early-stage founders pitching for the first, second or even tenth time think they know 90% of what it takes to build a product, hire a team or size a market appropriately, but in actuality, they probably know 10%. Does that deem them untrustworthy?
I think that's definitely true - lots of founders overestimate how much they actually know and I think part of that might be subconscious bias towards being better than the actually are. This is absolutely a super power when used in the right way as it can let people push through 'brick walls' when something seems impossible, but also results in lots of deluded founders.
I don't think it's so binary that they are untrustworthy, it's just that they haven't discovered what they don't know yet. However, the subliminal signal in an investors mind when they meet someone deluded is that it's very hard to trust what they have to say (especially when things aren't going well).
Thank you for your insights, Abhi. I enjoyed the read.
I'm curious; at what point does it stop being about the VC imparting their guidance, knowledge and expertise before they decide a founder hasn't 'thought about building a product deeply' enough? How long is that piece of string?
Trust is an immeasurably powerful paradigm across the entire spectrum of human to human interaction. I would argue, the vast majority of early-stage founders pitching for the first, second or even tenth time think they know 90% of what it takes to build a product, hire a team or size a market appropriately, but in actuality, they probably know 10%. Does that deem them untrustworthy?
I think that's definitely true - lots of founders overestimate how much they actually know and I think part of that might be subconscious bias towards being better than the actually are. This is absolutely a super power when used in the right way as it can let people push through 'brick walls' when something seems impossible, but also results in lots of deluded founders.
I don't think it's so binary that they are untrustworthy, it's just that they haven't discovered what they don't know yet. However, the subliminal signal in an investors mind when they meet someone deluded is that it's very hard to trust what they have to say (especially when things aren't going well).