The Founder Checklist: How VCs Decide Who to Back

What VCs really mean when they say they “bet on the team.”

I recently shared a LinkedIn post about how VCs often avoid saying outright that they do not like your team or that the market you are attacking is not attractive. One commenter asked if I could share a framework for how founding teams are evaluated by VCs.

Here is my attempt at such a framework, based on my experience as an angel investor and VC.

1. Motivation

This is about the founders’ hunger and motivation toward what they are building. The perception among investors is that in a competitive market, the founders who are willing to work until 2 a.m. will win over those who only want to work nine to five. I know this is unhealthy and unsustainable, but founders need to show that at critical times, working late into the night is not frowned upon. Building a startup is never easy, and taking it easy will not improve the odds of success.

2. Founder-Market Fit

Do the founders deeply understand a market opportunity that fits their background and experience? The strongest cases are when the opportunity feels almost inevitable for this team to pursue, whether it draws on what they have built before or on a pain they have lived through. Founder–market fit is not just about one person but the entire team. Even in saturated markets with entrenched incumbents, a team with insider knowledge, strong relationships, and relentless energy can break through. I have also noticed that cultural context plays a role, as I wrote about in my piece comparing Helsinki and Istanbul.

3. Venture Journey Fit

Not every founder or business is suited for venture capital. VCs ask a simple question: “Can this founder return the fund?” The company must be able to reach an outcome large enough to matter in the venture model, where only a few investments drive most of the returns.

This fit is about mindset as much as market size. Are the founders ready for the pace of scaling and the pressure of aiming for a billion-dollar outcome? Many strong companies are better off bootstrapped or financed differently, and misalignment here can waste years. It is not only about exit potential but also the likelihood of raising Series A, B, and C rounds. That is what the founder is signing up for, and VCs will assess those possibilities.

In short, a strong fit shows up when founders understand the expectations of hyper-growth, show ambition that matches the opportunity, and demonstrate resilience and leadership to manage large amounts of capital. Weak fit shows up when the market is niche, the ambition is capped, or the founders are unsure about the trade-offs of the VC path.

4. Team Complementarity

What matters is not just raw talent but how the founders’ skills fit together. Investors look for coverage across product, technology, go-to-market, and leadership. In most cases, a team of only product thinkers or only engineers leaves critical gaps. A balanced team can execute faster and adapt better.

Complementarity also shows in how founders divide responsibilities and handle conflict. The best founding teams are greater than the sum of their parts, while redundant skills often signal hiring gaps or future struggles. It is true that raising financing makes it easier to bring in missing talent. But motivation may be weaker if people only join once a paycheck is guaranteed.

5. Execution Track Record

Ideas are abundant, but the ability to deliver separates strong founders from the rest. VCs look for past entrepreneurial projects, relevant jobs, side projects, or even small wins that show follow-through.

What VCs look for:

• Evidence of follow-through: past startups, relevant jobs, side projects, or even small wins

• Shipped products, launched features, or milestones hit under pressure

• Clear bias toward action and turning vision into reality

• Measurable results from prior roles (growth metrics, revenue impact, user adoption)

What raises concerns:

• No history of shipping products or delivering outcomes

• Frequent role changes without tangible achievements

• Overemphasis on ideas or strategy with little proof of execution

• A track record that suggests talk exceeds follow-through

6. Learning Velocity

Startups move fast, and the best founders learn even faster. VCs look at how quickly a team adapts when KPIs stall or customers say no. Learning velocity is about resilience as much as speed. Strong founders treat setbacks as data and sharpen their focus with every signal. Teams that iterate rapidly, admit mistakes, and turn feedback into gains compound progress. The opposite is founders who cling to failing plans or show little improvement. For VCs, learning velocity is often the clearest predictor of survival in early growth.

In gaming, I have seen teams build a game, launch the MVP to get the KPIs, and then pivot straight to another game when the numbers disappoint, without stopping to reflect on what they actually learned beyond “this game wasn’t fun.” I have also seen founders ignore lessons from others, like trying to re-skin a women’s casual puzzler into a male-oriented game with swords and combat, only to burn money when CPIs shoot past $20. The knowledge is already out there, with countless examples of those experiments failing, yet people repeat them. And when someone points to Empires & Puzzles as a counterexample, the answer is not that Match3 magically worked for men, but that the real hook was the PVP competition and character collection layered on top. That is what strong learning velocity looks like: not just reacting to your own KPIs, but synthesizing insights from the market and from others before repeating the same mistakes.

7. Clarity of Vision

Investors want founders who can see beyond today’s product. Strong founders describe where the category will be in five or ten years, why it matters, and how their company can lead it.

Clarity of vision also applies internally. The best founders set a clear north star for the culture, values, and collaboration inside the company. Without this, teams chase short-term wins and lose sight of the bigger picture. VCs back leaders who can inspire customers, employees, and investors with both a market vision and a vision for the company itself.

8. Founder Dynamics

The chemistry between co-founders is often just as important as their individual skills. Investors want to know if the team can trust each other, make decisions under pressure, and resolve conflict in a way that strengthens rather than weakens the company. Strong founder dynamics create stability in the chaos of startup life, while weak dynamics are one of the most common reasons early companies fall apart.

Believe me, I have been there. My first venture-backed startup I started alone, and when the hard times came, all of the weight fell on my shoulders. At Next Games I corrected that mistake. I had several co-founders, and together we were pushing the same boulder up the hill.

What VCs look for:

• High level of trust and aligned motivations between co-founders

• Clear role division and complementary responsibilities

• Healthy decision-making that balances speed with input from all sides

• Evidence of constructive conflict, where debates strengthen ideas but end with unity

• Consistent communication and shared direction

What raises concerns:

• One founder dominates every discussion or decision

• Unbalanced equity splits that suggest future tension

• Slow or indecisive decision-making under pressure

• Visible tension or unresolved conflict during meetings or pitches

• Founders who avoid hard conversations instead of addressing them

9. Integrity & Self-Awareness

Integrity is non-negotiable for investors. A founder who exaggerates numbers, hides bad news, or spins half-truths may survive a pitch, but they will not build lasting trust. VCs look for honesty in how founders present their progress and challenges, and for transparency in how they handle setbacks. The early signals often come in small details: are they consistent in their story, do they own their mistakes, and do they give credit where it is due?

Just as important is self-awareness. No founder can do everything, and the best ones know where their strengths end and where others should take over. They are willing to recruit people better than themselves, to ask for help when needed, and to learn from those around them. Investors back leaders who are both confident and humble, who can inspire others while admitting they do not have all the answers. A founder who combines integrity with self-awareness creates an environment where teams trust leadership, and that trust compounds into stronger execution.

10. Early Talent Magnetism

Hiring great talent is one of the keys to success for VC-backed startups as they begin to scale. One of the strongest signals VCs look for is whether founders can attract great people before the company has money, traction, or brand recognition. Early hires and advisors usually take a leap of faith, betting more on the founder than on the product itself. If talented individuals are willing to join early, it shows that the founder can inspire belief in the mission and build the kind of loyalty that carries a startup through uncertain times.

Early talent magnetism is also a proxy for future recruiting ability. Scaling a company requires hiring dozens or even hundreds of people, and no investor wants to back a founder who struggles to convince anyone to come on board. Founders who can pull in high-caliber engineers, operators, or advisors early are demonstrating that they will be able to build the networks, teams, and culture needed for long-term growth. Weak talent attraction, by contrast, often points to future hiring struggles that can slow down even the best product ideas.

Red Flags

Charlie Munger once said, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” Founders can apply the same logic to their own journey. It is not only about knowing what makes a strong team, but also about being brutally honest with yourself about the patterns that destroy one. If you recognize the places where startup teams most often fail, you can steer clear of them before they drag you down.

Here are the top six red flags seasoned VCs look for:

Shaky Motivation

If the founder’s main driver seems to be money or chasing a hot trend rather than a deep connection to the problem, it raises doubts about long-term resilience.

Weak Founder-Market Fit

A team without relevant experience or unique insight into their chosen market looks interchangeable, which means higher execution risk.

Dysfunctional Team Dynamics

Unequal commitment, poor equity splits, or visible tension between co-founders often foreshadow bigger problems down the road.

Lack of Learning Velocity

Overconfidence without evidence of iteration is a warning sign. VCs want founders who adapt quickly to feedback, not those who dig in stubbornly.

Hiring Blind Spots

If a team struggles to attract strong first hires or insists on doing everything themselves, scaling becomes a bottleneck.

Mismatch with Venture Scale

Sometimes the founder is building something solid, but not venture-backable. If the opportunity cannot plausibly return a fund, VCs will pass no matter how good the product is.

In short: Red flags often boil down to misalignment. Misaligned motivations, mismatched markets, or misfit ambitions can sink a startup long before the product sees the light of day.

Case Study: Lovable

The vibe coding startup Lovable shows how these traits come together in practice. When investors lined up to fund the company, they were not just betting on a product. They were betting on a team that embodied founder–market fit, early execution signals, learning velocity, vision, and talent magnetism.

Founded in 2023 by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin, Lovable built on the momentum of GPT Engineer, Osika’s open-source project. According to some sources, Osika left his earlier startup Depict because it was not cutting edge enough, and he set out to create something bolder. By late 2024, Lovable had raised a $6m pre-seed round, and within months was reporting $17M ARR and 30,000 paying customers.

Founder-Market Fit

Co-founder Anton Osika had already built GPT Engineer, an open-source project with strong developer adoption. That gave him credibility and insider insight into AI-assisted coding, which was a natural springboard into Lovable. This was equivalent to building something and showing that demand existed long before “vibe coding” was even coined.

Early Execution Signals

With minimal funding, the team turned GPT Engineer’s momentum into a commercial product and quickly converted thousands of users into paying customers. By early 2025, Lovable reported $17M ARR and 30,000 customers, an unusually strong traction curve for a pre-Series A company.

Speed and Learning Velocity

Investors noted how quickly the founders iterated on feedback. Lovable’s team shipped features at a pace that matched the fast-moving AI landscape, a trait VCs see as critical in frontier markets.

Vision and Ambition

Lovable’s stated mission to make “everyone a software engineer” is big enough to support a venture-scale outcome. VCs saw founders who were not afraid to take on incumbents and reimagine how software is built.

Talent Magnetism

The team was able to attract strong early hires and high-profile investors, including Accel, Creandum, and Hummingbird. That kind of validation creates a reinforcing loop where great people want to work with other great people.

Final Words

When VCs evaluate founding teams, they are not looking for perfection. They are looking for evidence: hunger, fit with the market, the ability to learn fast, and the strength of the dynamics around them. The checklist may look simple, but living up to it is hard.

As a founder, you do not need to score ten out of ten on day one. What matters is that you show the seeds of these qualities, that you are aware of your strengths, and that you are honest about where you need to grow. The best investors are not just betting on your product, but on your capacity to become the kind of founder who can scale a company into the future.