Why VCs Should Have a Tech Person on Board in This Mega High Tech Era

“The 7 most expensive words in business are: ‘We have always done it that way!’“
Catherine DeVrye

As a Partner in an investment fund (EVF), one of my goals is to optimize the mechanisms for evaluating projects. Everything is because we want lower a probability of failure in the project we want to invest in.

It is obvious that every project in which the fund invests (today) is “this one star… unicorn opportunity” which will return capital many times, however statistics say that “just this” is usually 10% -20% of the portfolio. So we can definitely do something else at the project evaluation stage as a VC ecosystem. Mistakes also occur at later stages, but I will write about this another time.

What should we look at when evaluating a project?

• Is the startup tapping the right market
• How is product different from others
• Domain expertise of the team and team management
• Is the market already engaging with the product
• What is the plan to utilise the money
• Value creation of the product
• What is the startup’s focus on investment in R&D