What Distinguishes the Top Founders
What Distinguishes the Top Founders
In the venture industry, at the early stages, investors view the pitch as one indication of founder calibre. Ultimately, investors are betting on founders to build a generational company, and the bar is extremely high.
Top-tier investors see thousands of founders a year and back a handful. In this session, we dive into the specifics of what distinguishes founders that move from pitch to close versus ones that don't.
Two seasoned VCs share exactly what puts someone in that top quartile — and what quietly takes most founders out of the running. We focus on the two questions that matter most:
The Differentiators — What specific traits, behaviors, and signals separate the founders VCs move fast on from the ones they don't?
The Standard — How do investors go about evaluating top quartile founders (before there's significant proof on the business)?
There'll be time for Q&A at the end for founders looking for an honest, unfiltered view of the bar they're being measured against.
Speakers:
Paul Grossinger: Paul founded Gaingels in 2014, growing it from a small angel syndicate into a venture firm that has deployed $900M+ across 1,500+ companies — with 75+ unicorns in the portfolio, including Databricks, Weights & Biases, Figure AI, and Shield AI. Having backed more founders than most VCs will ever meet, Paul has a sharp eye for what separates the ones who break through from the ones who don't — and he's not shy about saying it.
Cameron Peake: Cameron is a Partner at Restive Ventures, where she backs early-stage fintech founders building the future of financial services. Restive Ventures has made 100+ investments till date and recently raised a $45 million fund to invest at seed and pre-seed stages.
Our Background:
Backed by a16z and YCombinator, Metal is an AI-powered operating system for founders raising venture rounds.