Scott Belsky: preference

Transcript context

…Perfect. On team, I really value founders who listen, who really learn, who long to shake shit up a bit, and also value the mission that they're on more than the money that it yields because I do think that especially during a period of time where you don't have revenue, you're going to need to be motivated by something grander and bolder than revenue. I also have an allergic reaction to founders that are real promoters who are constantly trying to sugarcoat the truth, who like to gloss over the hard parts. I've always admired leaders that are optimistic about the future but very pragmatic and somewhat pessimistic about the present. So the founders that I have a great sort of chemistry with are people who are like, "This is how big the market is. This is how amazing this is. I know this needs to exist." But we've got a lot to figure out. There are things that are not working. We don't have these data sets. These are the major obstacles we're struggling with. These are the things that keep me up at night. Those are real people. And you know that in that volatile messy middle that they're going to inevitably go through that their team, their investors are going to have the real truth and they're going to be able to engage and find solutions. So I really love finding those types of founders, and I'm very wary of the name-dropping overly promoting folks who are unlikely to be able to partner in that way. On the product side, I'm looking for an object model way of thinking about a product that I am confident the will scale and as they solve their problem. And when I say object model, what I mean is it clear whenever you're seeing the product, how it works, where you came from, where you're going? Those are the three questions I always ask when I'm doing product reviews. It's like, "How did I get here? What do I do now? And what do I do next?" And I feel like every screen and every product experience, you should be able to answer those three questions. Sometimes, I'll be talking to a team that says they're design driven, says that they're building a incredible product, and they'll show me a demo and I'm like, "This is all over the place." There's no clean clear breadcrumbs and object model for how this thing works. How are they ever going to get people through their funnel? Clearly, they don't value this as a core principle, and that's also always a red flag. And then finally, I just obviously have to believe in the problem they're solving. So those are some of the things I think about. And you focus primarily on consumer or do you invest all over the place? And I'm asking in case people want to reach out and maybe, "Hey Scott, you want to [inaudible 00:49:59]."…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.