The Thinkosphere

In my career, I’ve probably had conversations with around 2,000 venture-backed founders, and worked with about 200 of them.

On most calls, founders tell me about their vision, their products, their origin story, and their market. But those aren’t the things I care about. However, I listen, intently, to try to understand where they place their focus, what they feel is important to share, where their priorities lie, what motivates them, their theories, their goals, their strengths, their weaknesses, because I learn more by what they don’t say, than what they do.

What these founders don’t usually know, because they view me as an agency, a gun for hire if you will, is that I’m scanning for whether not I think they’re real, for lack of a better way to put it, so I can decide whether or not I want to spend my time with them. Especially now, that we’re living through the early days of what I...