Someone asked me recently "do VCs care more about product or team?"

1. They care about making money
2. Three variables: market, team and product

But if you hold market as the constant (that's a big if), then team tends to be a stronger signal at the early stage, product at the later stage. Ideally you have both.

"Strong" and "weak" are multi-dimensional and hard to precisely define. Not deterministic.

@pmarca has an excellent blog post on this:

Someone asked me recently "do VCs care more about product or team?"

1. They care about making money
2. Three variables: market, team and product

But if you hold market as the constant (that's a big if), then team tends to be a stronger signal at the early stage, product at the later stage. Ideally you have both.

"Strong" and "weak" are multi-dimensional and hard to precisely define. Not deterministic.

@pmarca has an excellent blog post on this: https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

How much of it is the honed gut instinct of someone whose made risks over and over again?

Devotional polytheist living a monastic lifestyle centered on curiosity, simplicity, and joy.  Exploring the intersection of technology and spirituality.

That's pretty much what "gut instinct" is.  Honed pattern recognition that doesn't need conscious processing because you've seen the pattern enough times.