The 100% Perfect Investor
The 100% perfect investor does not exist. But if they did, they would see every single deal. They’d source companies before the founders had even realized they were starting them.
No category, country, or stage could escape their careful analysis.
Meetings with them would be empirically awesome. Their questions would be bottom up and unsuspecting. I could describe them as “first-principles”, but I won’t, because they would hate that.
In other words, the perfect investor would see companies with unbiased eyes, especially ignoring the names of the other investors who are involved.
Because they would know how intoxicating social proof is. The mental sleight of hand it makes them susceptible to. The motivated reasoning that might slip in. The positivity bias that might pervade their diligence.
“Mind pollution,” they would call it.
“If you’re using a social framework to reduce uncertainty in this game, you are already doomed,” they’d say. “The alpha is gone before your conviction can get its pants on.”
Instead, the perfect investor would map out a mechanistic understanding of the key, outcome-determining drivers behind the business. Gear by gear, starting from the founder’s ultimate vision down to the very first customer.
“How frequent of a problem is it?” they would ask.
“How intense of a problem is it? Which subset of your customers are you targeting first? What job is your product the best in the world at? How can we get more specific with some of these assumptions?”
Of course I am only guessing. But one can could imagine how piercingly incisive their questions might be. How obscenely focused.
“Ok, that’s roughly X customers who’d probably pay up to $Y/year, 50% of which you could defend, best case. Which brings us to 0.5*X*Y.”
There would be no imaginary script, no role they felt they needed to play, just the intention to understand.
They would scan and probe the founder for predictors that fed into their massive, subconscious neural net ruthlessly optimized to output a simple prediction: the likelihood of a particular team making it, overcoming the challenges the perfect investor had already determined they’d have to face.
And, given the market, is this a bet worth making?
So yes, the investor would be the perfect picker. Separating Zuckerberg’s from McFarland’s as easily as an experienced chef might pick out just-ripe-enough produce at a grocery store.
But that’s not it. The founders they had to reject would get a message that radiated authenticity. Because they’d know how and understand how traumatic it is for the other side.
“The courage and decisiveness you have shown up to this point are indicative of something great within you,” they would say.
“I can’t join you at this stage in your journey, but don’t you for a second,” the investor would pause to point a shaky finger at the founder, “not even for a second, take that as a reflection of how I feel about you, or your ability.”
They’d smile with a warmth that would invigorate even the most despondent founder and say, “God speed.”
Then, of course, there are the founders that they do like.
The intimidating few that have captured the conviction of the perfect investor and raised it to a sufficient degree. What a group they must be.
This is where envious mortals raise their eyebrows and ask, how does the perfect investor get into the hottest deals? How do they guarantee access?
Through brand name recognition?
No, silly. The perfect investor does not ride on the coattails of others. Every inch of access is earned. Every figment of value-add they’ve projected into a founder’s mind is fully actualized. No brand-name handicaps, no false promises, no hubris.
You might expect a hire-worthy intro, several viral tweets, dozens of key customers, all before the perfect investor has even mentioned their preferred allocation.
And once they’ve secured a comfy position on the cap table, their value add would be astronomical. They wouldn’t wait for the founder to ask, they would be proactive. Some might call them an expert capital allocator, others a tractor beam. Pulling their portfolio up in magnetic field of precedent-obliterating value add.
They’d be brimming with initiative. Deeply and genuinely curious. Ah yes, that’s it. Thats why there’s value seeping from every pore of this Patagonia-loathing, consensus-fearing, college dropout’s body. There’s a chip on their shoulder. A whole bag of chips. They couldn’t help but poke at the world and report their findings back to founders.
So yes, this investor’s “value-add” would be truly unparalleled, they would give the phrase a new meaning.
And, when things took longer than expected, they wouldn’t lose their cool or give up on the founder. Because success is non-linear and the first bit of a parabolic curve looks flat. Because the average successful startup pivots three times before finding product-market-fit. Because despite being wildly successful, the perfect investor is somehow deeply, disgustingly, obviously, in it for the journey.
