What Makes A VC Say Yes To A Founder

Detailed summary

Sometimes, the founder worth betting on isn’t the one who already knows how to build a company; it’s the one who has found a problem worth solving.

Over the past year, I’ve backed 43 startups. This fall, I’m teaching Stanford School of Medicine’s AI Lab master’s course, training medtech entrepreneurs. Between investing at Treehub and teaching at Stanford, I spend my time thinking about what makes a founder successful. At Treehub, we’ve interacted with more than 700 startups over the past year—from polished pitches to brilliant scientists who have never pitched before and founders who can sell a vision but haven’t figured out how to build it.

There’s no one playbook to raise venture capital. Every investor has a different thesis and definition of potential. But reflecting on my time on both sides of the table, four qualities stand out to me.

The best founders can move between the big picture and the smallest details, explain how their company will transform an industry and then walk me through a technical challenge or what they learned from a failed experiment.

Vision without execution is just an idea. Execution without vision can lead to building something that never becomes a meaningful business.

This is particularly important in healthcare and AI. Scientists, physicians and researchers often understand a problem more deeply than anyone else. But building a company requires connecting that expertise to a bigger picture. Who needs this? Why now? How will it reach them? And how big could it become?

I don’t expect founders to know everything. I look for people who can connect what they know to what they still need to learn.

The best founders have an intangible quality that makes you want to keep listening. They paint a picture of what the world can become. They communicate in a simple, poetic way that captivates listeners, often with infectious energy.

It isn’t about being the loudest person in the room or having the slickest presentation. It’s about having contagious conviction that draws people in.

Building a company means convincing employees to join, convincing customers to try an unproven product and convincing…

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