Decision Systems
5 pieces
How Investors Stress-Test Market Sizing — and How to Catch Yourself First
Most sizing slides describe a market assembled for the meeting, not one that exists. The number that survives scrutiny is one whose every figure has provenance.
Reading Your Own Deck Like a Skeptic
Founders are structurally unable to read their own decks as a skeptic would. The fix is a method that locates the one assumption carrying the entire story.
The Questions That Kill a Series A Deck
Most Series A decks die in the first meeting to four or five plain questions a disciplined partner asks — questions a founder can run on themselves first.
Why I Stopped Writing Checks and Built an Instrument
Four bets across twenty-nine years turned out to be one bet. The scarce input in venture was never capital — it was judgment. So I stopped writing checks and built the instrument.
The First-Meeting Questions
The set of questions a partner asks in a first meeting, codified as a self-administered instrument — what each one tests beneath the surface, and how to read a strong answer from a weak one.