Sunil Chhaya on LinkedIn: At Kearny Jackson, founders constantly ask us what we look for in founding… (original) (raw)
Sunil Chhaya’s Post
Co-Founder and General Partner at Kearny Jackson
3mo Edited
At Kearny Jackson, founders constantly ask us what we look for in founding teams. I’m sharing the rough framework that my partner, Sriram Krishnan, outlined to assess founders as a pre-seed/seed investor. This is also how I judge whether someone is “biased for action” or “biased for thought.” I get along well with the former and not the latter, but that’s a story for another day. Level 1 - Speed of communicating Whether by text or email. Quick turnarounds, “acknowledged receipt” types of folks. Not being speedy is not necessarily a bad sign; it can also mean they’re busy or don’t care about you or your email. Usually “closes the loop” and, most importantly, tries to leave no email unresponded. Level 2 - Speed of rewriting deck or memo Founders who pitch one version of the deck and share an updated version after the pitch the same day with slides that address the questions asked during the pitch. Or founders that iterate on positioning and strategy quickly based on input and ship a new version of a deck within days. Some founders use a static deck when presenting (i.e. the same deck for weeks on end), but some are more dynamic and change/pivot/edit when new information or tactics come to light. Level 3 - Speed of talking to or onboarding design partners Founders who not only speak to 50-70 potential prospects within a short time frame but also ones who onboard X design partners very quickly. I’ve seen some founders pitch an idea in week one and sign up four design partners in week two. That’s pretty impressive regardless of what is being built and shows they can execute. Level 4 - Speed of shipping new code, new features, new products, or new pivots This is the holy grail. This is what every early-stage investor means by execution velocity. In the world of early-stage startups, the big fish don’t eat the small fish. The fast ones eat the slow ones. And how quickly you ship code represents how efficient or productive you can be in a resource-constraint environment. All investors would preferably want to see how founders execute with code, but (A) founders don’t always have product during the seed/pre-seed rounds, eg. figma designs, mock-ups, ideas, etc (B) so investors have to rely on other signals to decipher whether you can execute on 4 so levels 123 above will hopefully inform them on that.
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