Founder References
I'm doing a bunch of founder reference calls this week on a pre-seed deal we're looking at. There's a lot of different perspectives on how to do these well - how to get the highest density of value from a short conversation with people who are busy with their own lives and careers, and are probably doing the same exercise with a bunch of other investors.
I've tried to distil my DD list down to the highest impact questions to get a sense of whether the founders show the most important characteristics we care about.
Here's my rough list:
- How would you rate [Alice/Bob] in terms of (i) intensity; (ii) speed of learning; (iii) ability to sell; and (iv) technical capability?
- What is [Alice/Bob] unusually good at? Where does [he/she] spike?
- Did [Alice/Bob] hire and/or manage people? If so, what did you observe about the way they did it?
- What's the best way to give [Alice/Bob] feedback?
- Did you ever have cause to question [Alice/Bob]’s integrity?
Obviously that is highly generic, and needs to be supplemented with questions that are more specific to the start-up that [Alice/Bob] is building - particularly if it requires deep domain expertise or an 'earned secret'.
But in terms of a generic starter list that can get high density value from a short conversation, I'll go with the above for now.