Investors: How to find a winning team?

In a direct continuation to my post about “How to really invest in people”, I will break it down further and share a framework that any VC or founder can use for their benefit.

These insights came from my talk with Alex (👈detailed in this post) and from internal research we did at SAPIA.

But who is Alex you ask? Alex is an LP at Potential Ventures, a GP at SAATCHiNVEST the VC arm of Saatchi& Saatchi (which he actually founded a few years ago), an adviser at RedBrain, a seed investor in 20+ startups such as (CityMapper, Ometria, Farewill & many more).

Let’s start with the deepest question founders & investors should consider=>

What makes an All-Star founder material?

Everyone has felt a bit of self doubt in their lives. Many of us have tasted the good old ‘imposter syndrome’ before. Not many talk about it… But Alex shared this golden nugget with me:

“if you have a deep enough level of self-inquiry, you would discover what you’re good at and go “beast mode” on it. If you are willing to show a little vulnerability and share what you’re weak at you can hire around it / find team members who complete you”.

There are two underlying points here in Alex’s way of thinking:

1. Amazing founders are molded through life, they are not born with the skills they need.
2. It’s more about self-inquiry than knowledge & education.

True founders are self aware, seek to improve, know what they aren’t good at.

Alex also shard some tell-tales that indicate you could have a bright future ahead of you (hint: it’s not what you think…) ->

Counter-intuitive signs that you have a great potential

You don’t fit in in linear institutions (Uni, large corporations, etc.).

You are a Linky-brain =you make instant connections, super-creative, it’s hard for you to think mechanically, you have a massive bias for action, you are good at improvising, you have an insane amount of energy, you are a generalist who isn’t good at anything but that’s good at a lot of intersecting things.

To read more about Linky brains by Alex Dunsdon (click here).

So what is the right team?

After listening to my podcast with Alex again(link: Ep.03) and processing it deeply, my co-founders and I had a very long conversation.

Here is the framework we came up with as a result:

1. Allstar founders have a good level of self-inquiry, they want to improve, they want to explore their weaknesses and work on them. However, they focus on their strengths.
2. They want to change as people, the experience of growing a startup is a tool to achieve that. They know that no one knows what the outcome will be, so they focus on the process & the framework rather than the results. They are just trying to get better at their craft.
3. They care about something that’s bigger than themselves. It’s not about the money / ego. They have something else motivating them. Deeper.
4. They complete each other - the team members think in different ways but they manage to work together well knowing that the synergy between them is greater than the sum of all parts. They learn how to communicate and collaborate effectively.
5. They think first principals —Elon Musk didn’t wake up in the morning and decided to build an electrical battery factory for Tesla. He used a different kind of reasoning — called first principles thinking.

These 5 things is what we would look for in a partner.

These 5 things are what we believe investors should learn about teams they want to invest in.

CVs, initial traction, or cool products in hot new markets are not sound enough indicators of success.

Out of these 5 ☝ ️elements — the least understood one is first principles thinking and its application to business, but that will be the topic of another post.