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

Any common ways investors seem to be evaluating teams that you disagree with?

Anything you've learned to look for in team that is especially useful?

building /bracket | hosting /greatbooks + /gray | ex-BCG, ex-PHD | poli + phil + econ

Disagree with, not really. I've never done the job the full-time, so hard to know what the right mindset is.

Teams: bias for action, pareto optimal balance of taste / quality and velocity, strong early hires.