That is easy to forget after a long career. Experience gives us patterns, judgment, and a useful sense of what can go wrong. It can also tempt us to judge a new founder by the markets, technologies, and management habits that shaped our own success.
The better approach is curiosity.
A diverse group of entrepreneurs can teach an inquisitive investor how customers are changing, which old assumptions no longer hold, and where new communities are creating demand. Founders who grew up in different places, worked in different industries, or solved problems outside the investor’s familiar network often see opportunities the established market has overlooked.
A pitch meeting should not be treated only as an audition. It is also a chance to learn.
I want to ask:
• What changed that makes this possible now?
• What do your customers understand that incumbents do not?
• Which part of your experience gives you an unusual advantage?
• What did experienced people initially dismiss?
• What evidence would cause you to change your mind?
Those questions do more than test the entrepreneur. They test the investor’s assumptions.
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This does not mean discarding prior experience. Experience remains valuable when it sharpens the questions rather than supplying every answer. The investor can still examine execution risk, economics, leadership, and market size. But those tools should help us understand the founder’s world, not force that world to resemble our own.
An investor who listens only for familiar patterns will keep finding versions of the past. An investor who listens to understand can recognize a future that has not yet reached the boardroom.
The entrepreneurs applying for capital may be seeking our judgment. If we remain genuinely inquisitive, their varied experiences may teach us more than another year spent repeating our own.
Hello Dave. Indeed, this sensitivity to understand opens up a much broader view of the perception of oneself but also of the other. The investor’s view and that of the young entrepreneur: Critical awareness. The mindset and the changing environment, if this perception evolves in the world of entrepreneurship, it will allow us to see the environment as a social entity, changing and different. Investors would also gain a lot.
Bonjour Dave. Effectivement cette sensibilité à comprendre ouvre donc une vue beaucoup plus large de la perception de soi mais aussi de l’autre. La vue de l’investisseur et celle du jeune entrepreneur : La conscience critique. Le mindset et l’environnement changeant, si cette perception evolue dans le monde de l’entrepreneuriat, cela va permettre de voir l’environnement comme un entité sociale, changeante et differente. Les investisseurs gagneraient aussi beaucoup.