Andrew Marks

I definitely can't attest to having nearly as much experience in recruiting.

We've added a whole three people to our team now.

But I do think that the vast majority of the venture investment decision making is about understanding founders and having a sense for founders.

I mean, again, after talking about all this business analysis stuff, we firmly believe that the vast, vast majority of the investment consideration is backing the right people.

And so what you're doing, I think, every day, every week is evaluating people.

And so you have to do that in the same way.

And so I think, first of all, when you hear a venture pitch, so many of them that we all hear are like, you know, the person gets on and it's like, here's where I went to school.

Here's where I worked.

And then I worked here and now I'm doing this.

And let me tell you what I'm doing.

And.

I sort of say, no, no, no, let's stop.

I want to spend a lot of time understanding you.

And I think the real way to suss out judgment is by going through the person's story and background and understanding why they made decisions.

Because you can sort of fake your way through prospective things.

And when I and I'm sure you guys were recruiting at a school, you know, there was the vault guide for finance interviews.

And you could memorize every single answer about how you would do this and how you would do that and whatever.

And so if you really dive into what people have done and why, and if they've made decisions based on their own judgment, and if they've learned and evolved, and if they've made decisions based on first principles, and we're willing to go against the herd, and we're willing to do things because they're passionate, and if their idea comes from specific knowledge of a real problem and a real deep understanding, I think you can evaluate judgment very well based on that.

And so I think that translates into hiring too, you know, really understanding what people have done in the past and why.

And then I think you can also test for specific skills in the hiring process.