A founder arrives with a working product and a hundred paying customers. An inexperienced investor might mistake this for evidence. At NQL8R, we know it is the beginning of a process.
Traction raises questions.
How were those customers acquired without a head of communications? Why does the product exist before the five-year business plan? And if the founder spends all day building and selling, when will they find the time to attend our meetings?
These are not questions that can be answered in a single call. Particularly because the person attending the second call was not in the first.
We do not invest in products we do not understand. We also do not allocate time to understanding products.
Independent judgment.
Our committee’s distance from technology is intentional. A person who understands the system might get distracted by what it can do. We stay focused on what matters: team completeness, slide consistency and whether someone has filled in the competitor matrix.
Every founder claims their business is different. Our process ensures they all receive the same questions.
The value of patience.
Ten meetings. Two hours each. By the end, a founder has demonstrated the resilience to explain the same thing repeatedly, the financial stability to survive without an answer, and the restraint to thank us for our valuable feedback.
We consider these excellent proxies for entrepreneurship. They are certainly easier to assess than the product.
A fictional investment memo from a fictional fund. Any resemblance to a meeting you attended is unfortunate.
Test your readiness