Excerpt from a YouTube interview where Balaji Srinivasan describes the founder qualities he prefers: fast, resourceful, highly positive (a 'grim determination' rather than naive optimism), resilient under pressure, high intelligence and work ethic, and a demonstrated track record (e.g., shipping projects publicly or building prototypes). He prefers founders who have "independent lift"—they could succeed even without the investor—and values seeing evidence of work done online or prior accomplishments.
Chapters
I mean, really, I look at the.
Abilities of the founders, I know that's, that's an obvious one to say, but.
You'Re just really looking for people who.
Are very fast, very resourceful, very positive, like really important.
And I don't mean in an unrealistic positive way.
I mean in the, like, you know, Elon is overquoted.
I mean, it was amazing. But basically, like, you know, there's a.
Like quoting him is almost like quoting Jobs at this point. But basically there's this thing, the lawn.
Where someone was talking about getting to Mars and they're like, oh, you sound very optimistic.
He's like, optimistic. He didn't mean it in an optimist way because he knew how hard it.
Was going to be, but he's like, the grim determination of going to do it. That kind of positivity is what you.
Really need because startup is so hard that you need to be very resilient. Right. And you know, I think so obviously, high intelligence, work ethic, all the type stuff. But I think the positivity thing, it's.
Hard to measure that in one interaction.
Because lots of people will break if you put enough pressure on them and.
You don't really know who has like.
Titanium adamantium skeletons until that pressure actually arrives.
Yeah.
Anyway. Yeah. And considering that it's not something you can decide quickly, what's your process? Like, what's your sort of personal due diligence to assess the founder qualities that you're looking for? Well, I mean.
I prefer getting to know folks based on something they've done online.
Like they've got a portfolio of things they've proven they can ship things in the past. Like, for example, Feroz, who, I can't pronounce his last name, but he was.
A Stanford student who built a YouTube.
Instant in a day and then he sent that off to Chad Hurley and he got a job at YouTube and so on.
Essentially, a demonstrated track record of accomplishment.
Is important and just basically being positive, relentless. And as a VC or as an investor, as an angel, what you really.
Want to do is throw coins into.
A hot air balloon in the sense.
That you want to have somebody who.
Has independent lift, who's going to take off on their own and is going to get to that destination.
And then the money is a help. It's not even necessary for you to do it. They would be able to do it even without you. Right. And that's a person who, like, as.
An investor you want to bet on typically. Now that's much easier said than done.
