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Comment by nickelcitymario | Hacker News Reader

But do you know of any examples of VCs investing in a team before knowing what the product will be? Maybe those examples exist and I'm ignorant of them.

By contrast, movie studios keep lots of people on staff or on rotating contracts, often with no idea of what the film will be. They hire people on the assumption that those people will figure out the idea.

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Early stage (preseed and seed) investor here. I think the easier way to conceive of this is that if I have conviction around the team but not necessarily the product, I will likely invest. The inverse is almost never true for me.

I have invested in founders where I thought their initial conception of the product wasn’t likely to find PMF but I believed that the team had good instincts and the necessary skills to iterate to a different product.

If you didn’t believe the idea could find PMF why did you believe in the teams instincts?

Same reason an NBA team will draft someone who isn't ready be a starter averaging a double double. If I believe the team is elite and that the potential is there, there's potential for such an asymmetric outcome that it's a worthwhile bet.

I don't know the NBA that well but in NHL you would draft someone with high stats in the minor leagues, knowing they will develop (physically and mentally) into someone who can achieve the same stats at a higher level. The game is the same but the parameters are larger. It takes time to work out at the gym, make quicker decisions, cleanup some weakness. There are many other factors like how their strengths will play into the teams structure, etc.

Is this the model you would apply? What are the parameters that are key to founders beneath the idea itself?

I think Color Labs was close. While I'm sure they shared a plan with VCs I remember a lot or surprise that they had raised so much cash pre-launch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs

Yes this is exactly what early stage and seed investors are doing. They know the idea will still live, but they trust the team to figure out what to do.

I know several people on both sides of this equation.

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