Finding Undiscovered Talent

Babak Nivi writes the excellent blog Venture Hacks and was an early Lean Startup evangelist: http://venturehacks.com/. He’s since gone on to create Angel List, which matches startups and investors around the world: http://angel.co/

Metrics for success is a fascinating problem, because at the end of your day, you're planting seeds. And it'll take a decade or so for it to grow into its tree. We have these moments at Pioneer where we're not quite sure, are we successful or not? Companies have, at the end of the day, a very short-term feedback loop to chase, which is revenue, whi

The first question that Trae Stephens asks in every pitch meeting is: “What is the origin story of this business?” 

• Asking this question is the easiest way to measure disagreeableness in founders 


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• Many companies are started by “whiteboard founders”, where the idea is secondary to them being an entrepreneur 

 One thing I'm always on the lookout for with people. Are they moving quickly? Are they evolving quickly? In my view, at the end of the day, when you're betting on a founder, especially if the market's not super clear, what you're trying to do is, you're trying to predict that, that particular person will have as many shots on goal as possible