January 2012A year ago I noticed a pattern in the least successful startupswe'd funded: they all seemed hard to talk to. It felt as if therewas some kind of wall between us. I could never quite tell if theyunderstood what I was saying.This caught my attention because earlier we'd noticed a patternamong the most successful startups, and it seemed to hinge on adifferent quality. We found the startups that did best were theones with the sort of founders about whom we'd say "they can takecare of themselves." The startups that do best are fire-and-forgetin the sense that all you have to do is give them a lead, and they'llclose it, whatever type of lead it is. When they're raising money,for example, you can do the initial intros knowing that if youwanted to you could stop thinking about it at that point. You won'thave to babysit the round to make sure it happens. That type offounder is going to come back with the money; the only question ishow much on what terms.It seemed odd that the outliers at the two ends of the spectrumcould be detected by what appeared to be unrelated tests. You'dexpect that if the founders at one end were distinguished by thepresence of quality x, at the other end they'd be distinguished bylack of x. Was there some kind of inverse relation betweenresourcefulness and being hard to talk to?It turns out there is, and the key to the mystery is the old adage"a word to the wise is sufficient." Because this phrase is notonly overused, but overused in an indirect way (by prepending thesubject to some advice), most people who've heard it don't knowwhat it means. What it means is that if someone is wise, all youhave to do is say one word to them, and they'll understand immediately.You don't have to explain in detail; they'll chase down all theimplications.In much the same way that all you have to do is give the right sortof founder a one line intro to a VC, and he'll chase down the money.That's the connection. Understanding all the implications — even theinconvenient implications — of what someone tells you is a subset ofresourcefulness. It's conversational resourcefulness.Like real world resourcefulness, conversational resourcefulnessoften means doing things you don't want to. Chasing down all theimplications of what's said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortableconclusions. The best word to describe the failure to do so isprobably "denial," though that seems a bit too narrow. A betterway to describe the situation would be to say that the unsuccessfulfounders had the sort of conservatism that comes from weakness.They traversed idea space as gingerly as a very old persontraverses the physical world.[1]The unsuccessful founders weren't stupid. Intellectually theywere as capable asthe successful founders of following all the implications of whatone said to them. They just weren't eager to.So being hard to talk to was not what was killing theunsuccessful startups. Itwas a sign of an underlying lack of resourcefulness. That's whatwas killing them. As well asfailing to chase down the implications of what was said to them,the unsuccessful founders would also fail to chase down funding,and users, and sources of new ideas. But the most immediate evidenceI had that something was amiss was that I couldn't talk to them.Notes[1]A YC partner wrote:My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours,they've already decided what they're going to do and everything Isay is being put through an internal process in their heads, whicheither desperately tries to munge what I've said into somethingthat conforms with their decision or just outright dismisses it andcreates a rationalization for doing so. They may not even be consciousof this process but that's what I think is happening when you saysomething to bad groups and they have that glazed over look. I don'tthink it's confusion or lack of understanding per se, it's thisinternal process at work.With the good groups, you can tell that everything you say is beinglooked at with fresh eyes and even if it's dismissed, it's becauseof some logical reason e.g. "we already tried that" or "from speakingto our users that isn't what they'd like," etc. Those groups neverhave that glazed over look.Thanks to Sam Altman, Patrick Collison, Aaron Iba, Jessica Livingston,Robert Morris, Harj Taggar, and Garry Tan for reading drafts ofthis.
