TLDR: Below is a copy of a document I use to brainstorm questions and evolve my approach to screening founders at day zero
Three or four standard deviations higher on resilience.
That’s what Sam Altman says is the non-obvious founder trait that predicts success.
“Non-obvious” in the sense that it’s hard to determine and underwrite, not that it’s hard to believe as a prerequisite for success.
I do 30-40 founder screening calls a week during peak scouting periods, and well over 500 per year. That’s a lot of shots on goal and repetitions to figure out how to screen for resilience, but the real mistake would not be having a system to consistently improve.
Below is an evolving document I use, swapping out questions and traits, iterating on my process and seeing what questions I can use to learn the most I can about a founder. As this evolves and strengthens, so does my edge. Entire sections will be added and deleted over time.
Screening for Maniacs
Below are some traits that show up in our most productive and successful founders. Each section has a brief explanation, example, and set of questions, along with the intention behind what we’re trying to observe from the answers. Keep in mind, our diligence on execution comes during the residency, so interviews are primarily for underwriting character.
We should obsess over this topic endlessly, and develop pattern recognition by doing it over and over again. In doing so, we will calibrate founder interviews more effectively, and optimize our learning toward a person’s character, values, and potential to accomplish something undeniably hard. Important: actual answers do not matter as much as observations of character.
Narcissism
Explanation: Crazy confidence in themselves, believe they’re destined for more, and have big egos. To do something that changes the world, you first have to believe you’re capable of it and destined for it
Example: «Antler Founder» gets a $6m term sheet with a standard vesting schedule, and he says to me “if they want my shares to vest over four years, they don’t understand that I will die before this is less than a $10B company” — obviously absurd to debate vesting, but it’s the sentiment
Questions:
Do you believe you’re a natural leader, or is that something you learn?
Do you find that if you wanted to, you could win any argument?
If you’re honest with yourself, do you feel like you’re better than others?
What to observe: the answer doesn’t matter, what we’re looking for is if the founder is assertive, opinionated, demonstrating unnatural enthusiasm and optimism, and if they are more interested in getting you to believe what they’re saying, versus interested in saying the socially acceptable thing for an interview
No Balance
Explanation: Founder should be front-loading their time, giving it everything they have, working nights and weekends, insanely passionate (re; Kobe’s 4am, Reid Hoffman’s “no balance”)
Example: «Antler Founder» will text me every single morning at 6am to remind me he is working hard than me, and I’ll even get 2-5am texts of playlists that keep the team motivated at crazy hours to keep grinding
Questions:
What’s more important; the business and making it succeed, or keeping a sense of balance? Why?
Walk me through a typical weekday versus weekend day, from wake-up to bed
What are your work hours and output expectations from yourself and your team?
Observe: Outlier expectations of themselves and of others, with examples as well as clear speed in execution. It’s not enough to be working hard and fast. Fast can be directionless, founders need to be fast *and* demonstrate trajectory
Optimism & Creativity
Explanation: Founder needs to believe problems are just obstacles not impossible roadblocks. Succeeding is about solving problem after problem for a decade or more; that requires optimism and reframing of problems into opportunities
Example: «Antler Founder» is an ex-pro athlete. He couldn’t get BaaS licenses to build the banking solution he envisioned so he pivoted to card-linked offers because it was another path to the same outcome. He couldn’t raise money, so he collected 50 SAFE’s. Now he’s doing 700K in monthly revenue and is building the banking solution he originally drew up. He sees every challenge as an opportunity to solve something that someone else couldn’t/didn’t/won’t
Questions:
If a law changed, a privacy regulation for example, and it all the sudden made your product illegal, what would you do?
Tell me about a time something seemed impossible, maybe you even doubted yourself, but you overcame it. What was the situation, what did you do about it, and what was the outcome?
Imagine your co-founder quits, a competitor gets $50m in funding, social unrest is rampant, and things at home are rocky. Life is as bad as it’s ever been. Can you name 3 opportunities that would come from that?
Observe: They should bring creativity to solutions, and come up with ways around obstacles. They should see opportunity in chaos—very good at seeing the silver lining of anything. Often reframe things well or can create a value proposition out of anything. Again, answer doesn’t matter, most ideas are bad anyway, the observation is about their enthusiasm, creativity, and optimism
Problem Solver
Explanation: Similar to the optimist, but this is about having a bias toward action, not just “glass 200 % full and overflowing” mentality
Example: Interest rates went up, and everyone is talking about how hard it will be to raise. «Antler Founder» is building a literal rocket ship to go to space, but couldn’t raise a big round to get going. Instead, they built preliminary designs with what they had. They built an advisory board. Inspired influential people on joining the company. Built partnerships within the industry for supply chain and eventual customers. They got involved in industry events, traversing the country to shake hands and take part in the politics of space. They did everything they could to reduce whatever risks they could with whatever they had. Josh Wolfe says every time you reduce some risk you create some value, and that’s what they did, no matter how small the progress was, it was progress and risk reduction. Resourcefulness is free.
Questions:
You’ve done 200 VC meetings in 4 weeks and no one is investing. What’s your next move?
You’re not technical and you have no capital. Can you come up with 10 ways to plug that gap?
Observe: No fluff, real examples and real ideas of what can be done quickly to move forward and make progress. On 10 examples, it’s not about getting to 10, it’s about how difficult it appears for the person to start rattling off creative approaches. The strong founder usually rattles off a few right away and then naturally prioritizes the ideas against how easy and how impactful they would be—looking for a natural ability to find efficiencies and execute
Early Life Agency
Explanation: Many great founders have stories from childhood that make them seem different/special when it comes to being a naturally independent thinker and doer. It’s almost as if being a founder is core to their being
Example: «Antler Founder» started his first “company” at 4 years old, then started working at 14 and built his first real business at 16 and sold it in high school for 7 figures
Questions:
What stories do your parents often repeat about your childhood?
What is a favorite story you have of your childhood?
At what age did you start working and why?
What do you think were the earliest signs of ultimately becoming a founder?
Observe: Does this person light up? Does it seem like a natural calling? Have they had to overcome a lot growing up? Does it appear they are genuine in their character and do they have a natural inclination toward self-reliance, independent thinking, self-teaching, and making things happen on their own? What do their parents know about them that is simply a core truth about this individual and are these qualities that make for good founders?
The Competitor
Explanation: Failure is not an option. Losing is worse than winning is good—and winning is really really good. Full out effort to realize their potential and to beat others. Often unapologetic
Example: «Antler Founder» was a former pro tennis player, traveled around the world at a very young age living on their own, and ultimately was recruited to MI-6. Now growing at 30% per month for 8 consecutive months—they’re competitive and focused on the scoreboard, the growth charts, the customer numbers… they see a way to win and they optimize for it. Compounding execution and competing against yourself is a recipe for success
Questions:
What’s the most competitive you’ve ever been?
Did you play any sports growing up, what level did you get to?
Have you ever coached or led a team of people? What were the team’s goals, how did you approach them, and what was the outcome?
What’s a goal you’ve set for yourself that was hard or big, others may have thought it wasn’t possible, but you attempted it anyway?
Observe: We’re looking for the thing that demonstrates their spike or outlier tendencies, what have they done, what did they do about it, and what was the outcome? Do they shy away from wanting to be the best and wanting to work hard, or do they thrive on winning? Do they dream big and do hard things? How juiced up does this person seem about the idea of winning, or how badly do they hate the idea of losing?
Productive & Efficient
Explanation: The best founders don’t waste time in theory and complexity, they have a natural ability to recognize what is important and find the fastest way to get the outcome they want. Brian Armstrong says action generates information
Example: «Antler Founder» needed a technical cofounder during program. Instead of interviewing dozens of people and wasting weeks, he found the person he thought was the best and got on a plane to go recruit him. He stayed there, they ordered pizzas all weekend, working day and night together determining if it was a good fit and what they could do together. He came back with a committed cofounder, a prototype, and his first LOI’s from customers
Questions:
You’re given a research paper to write. It needs to be done in 3 hours, cited resources, no plagiarism, and you must take an entirely unique position on a well-known topic. What do you do?
You’re given 12 hours to build a company. There are 10 people competing. You will be judged on product, users, revenue, and vision. Take 2 minutes to think about it, then tell me your plan to win.
You’re in college and you’re taking a class that your friend has every single previous test for. The teacher reuses all of the questions. Do you A) Study and learn the material, or B) Memorize answers from previous tests?
Observe: We’re looking for someone who will find the fastest/best path to the result they’re looking for. Are they resourceful, do they bend the rules, do they have a unique approach to the 12-hour challenge (Stanford example), or do they take the long way to the solution because cutting corners feels wrong? We don’t care if they cut corners on remedial things of low importance like getting an arbitrary grade from an arbitrary person on an arbitrary paper, but we do care if they cut corners on mission critical items (ie. is this blood testing accurate?). Founder should place varying levels of importance on efficiency; system over subsystem
Focus and Simplicity
Explanation: We’re looking for people who don’t get bogged down in complexity. They sort of see the pieces in their head and rearrange them, almost dialing and weighting their importance; akin to first principle thinking. These people have a unique ability to simplify
Example: «Antler Founder» is not interested in hiring a lot of people or building out custom POC’s for his customers, instead he cares that his underwriting model works, so he invested 6-figures of his own money into loans, he ran hypothesis tests on size of loans and duration, he prioritized a cofounder with perfect founder-market fit, he ran the fundraising playbook exactly as prescribed and ended up turning away $2.5m because he didn’t need the money. He is laser focused and organized on what needs to happen now, at this stage, versus what he will do at the next evolution and step of the company
Questions:
What are the 3 most important things right now? If you crossed off 2 of them, what would be the 1 remaining? How are you approaching that one thing?
Tell me what your company does in one sentence and explain it to me as if I were a child
Observe: Are they speaking to think or thinking to speak? Is it concise and clear in what they really need to focus on? Do they seem to have a personal sense of urgency about it? Someone who has obsessed over their product can often be long-winded, but those with obsession and focus, often refine their thinking for impact. You stand out be being brief.
Lightning Fast Response Time
Explanation: The best are on top of their work, they email and text almost instantly because they have a personal sense of responsibility and urgency. This isn’t true for everyone, but when we see it, it’s a positive
Example: It doesn’t matter if you email, text, or Slack «Antler Founder», you will get an answer in minutes. She is on top of everything. You have to imagine that is how her team operates too, and the culture she is building will match that as well. There’s exponential leverage in that.
Questions:
This one you can simply observe. Send a clarifying one-sentence question about the business. We call it the email interview
If your cofounder/teammates ask you for something, do you like to think about it for a while or do you drop everything and solve it? Why?
How do you manage your calendar?
Observe: Time is precious, if they’re not responding or working or shipping or talking to customers they are slowing the business down, and they’re slowing others down too. These people feel an urge to move quickly, and it shows up in the importance they place on communication
Objective Truths in Execution, Slope & Y-Intercept
Explanation: We want people who optimize for the system, not the subsystem. They don’t care about which features exist, just that the features that do exist work, and work really well. They focus on objective reality of customer/user behavior, and focus on creating magical moments in their products that are so good that users/customers tell others about it. They measure PMF in some way shape or form and run very fast development cycles to continually optimize for the greater good of the business rather than the emotional conviction they have on any one subsystem cog in the wheel. The speed and slope of their progress matters, and thoughtful execution compounds faster than chaos
Example: «Antler Founder» has quietly grown to 40k users by working insanely close with their users and communities, developing so much brand and product loyalty that their community raised $550K as part of their seed round in under a week
Questions:
What features are you currently testing, and which features are you currently cutting?
What is the single magical moment for your user/customer, and how do you know?
How are you measuring progress? Why do you measure it that way?
If you had to scrape your whole product and start over, but you could keep one small piece of it—which piece would you keep? Why don’t you do that?
What is the fastest you have ever hired and fired someone?
Observe: is the founder emotionally attached to theoretical value? We see this a lot in the “all-in-one” or “end-to-end” platforms. Or, even though emotionally difficult, is the founder willing to fire people and cut features to continually strengthen their focus, building high output cultures, and compounding the parts of the business that create real objective value?
See you Monday.