Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures) on due diligence questions at pre-seed. His blog post covers questions about founders and key people, equity ownership, corporate structure, finances and expenses. Good questions.
Charles mentions that former colleagues, at reference checks, are rarely great at identifying if someone will be a great founder or entrepreneur.
I agree with that. One reason is that a founder to be “a great founder” needs founder-market fit. I.e. being a great founder is most often tied to building a company in a specific market and not a general professional skill. And former colleagues are unlikely to catch that.
