What we look for before the world does
Relentlessness shows up as a pattern of behaviour long before it shows up in a pitch. Here is how we read it in a first meeting.
We say we back the relentless. That word gets used loosely, so we should say what we mean by it and how we look for it when we meet a founder for the first time. Relentlessness is not intensity in the room. Plenty of people are intense for an hour. It is a pattern that shows up in the history of the company and in how the founder talks about it, and it can be read in a first meeting if you know where to look.
Pace of iteration
We ask what has changed since the last version, and then we ask again. Founders who are moving can tell you what they shipped last week, what they learned from it and what they are changing because of it. The specifics are fresh and the loop is short. Founders who are not moving describe the product in the present tense as a finished thing and the plan in the future tense as something that happens once the round closes. We back the first group.
Candor about failure
Every early company has something that did not work. We want to hear about it unprompted. A founder who volunteers the launch that flopped, the hire that went wrong or the customer who left, and explains what they did next, is showing us how they will behave when we are an investor and something goes wrong again. A founder with only wins to report is either too early to have failed or is editing. Both are useful to know.
Customer specificity
We listen for names. Not logos on a slide, but the particular person at the particular company who uses the product, what they used before, what they complained about last month and what they asked for next. Founders who know their customers this well describe them without reaching for a deck. Founders who describe a market instead of a customer usually have not sold anything yet, and often have not tried.
Founder and market history
We ask how long the founder has been circling this problem. Sometimes the answer is a career. Sometimes it is a year of obsession that began with a personal frustration. Both can work. What we listen for is whether the problem chose the founder or the founder chose the problem from a list, because the first kind keeps going when the second kind gets tired.
Why we pass quickly
We pass fast when the answers above are generic, when the founder cannot name a customer, when the plan depends on a hire who has not been made, or when the story has been shaped for investors more than for users. We also pass when we cannot be useful. A small check from someone with no relevant network is only money, and money is not the scarce thing.
Revenue is not the test
A deck with no revenue does not bother us. At pre-seed it is the normal condition. What we need is a strong story told with specifics: who the customer is, what they do today, why this founder is the person to change that, and what has been learned so far. If that story is strong, the missing revenue line is a timing detail. If it is weak, no revenue line would fix it.
