What are VCs looking at?

Quoted from Concrete Convina. Very insightful.

 

F - A - S - T PUQ.

F stands for Financial IQ - how smart is entrepreneur financially? You have to understand your business financially. You can't delegate this. You better have a handle on the numbers.

A is for Aspiration - to what do they aspire? Is it something meaningful? Is the venture success tied to the aspiration? I didn't want to invest in someone that wanted to pay off their $300K house. I wanted someone that had a critical internal need to achieve. And that the business success was tied to this need.

S stands for Start-Up IQ? Is the entrepreneur Start-up savvy? Are they going to negotiate like hell wherever they can? Are they going to spend wisely or richly? Can they "do"? At my last business we once hired a cat that stopped dead in his tracks because we ran out of fax cover sheets (remember those?). I assure you that cat was not start up smart and this is something bad in a young start up new hire. It is something deadly in a start-up founder.

T stands for Team quotient? How team oriented are they? Do you hear "I" a lot or do you hear "team"? A successful company - any company is the result of a team.

...

PUG stands for Personal Urgency Quotient. It's a measure of how urgent they are about NOW. What are they working and how urgent is it in their world. Are they doing today what they can do today or are they putting off to tomorrow what can happen today.