How VCs Actually Think: Deep Tech, Founder Traits & the Truth About Venture Capital (John Forbes)

Startup Wins Podcast, Season 2, Ep 6, Part 1 of 2 

What do venture capitalists actually look for—and why do most founders get it wrong?

In this episode of Startup Wins, host Brandon Na sits down with John Forbes, Principal at Julian Capital and the operator behind Deep Checks—the world’s largest deep tech funding platform.

From building startups in high school to investing in cutting-edge hardware, climate, and AI infrastructure, John breaks down what separates founders who get funded from those who don’t.

💥 In this episode, you’ll learn:

*The 5 traits top VCs look for in founders (and why most fail here)
*What “market pull” really means—and why it matters more than your idea
*The biggest mistakes founders make when pitching investors
*Why deep tech (hardware, energy, robotics, AI infrastructure) is exploding
*How Austin is emerging as a top startup + venture hub
*Whether venture capital is actually “broken” (and the real truth behind it)

John also shares real stories from the front lines—working inside a public safety platform startup, managing HR as Chief of Staff, and navigating the chaos every founder eventually faces.

🎧 Whether you’re a founder, investor, or operator, this episode gives you a rare inside look at how venture capital really works—and how to position yourself to win.

🔔 Subscribe to Startup Wins for more conversations with top VCs, founders, and operators shaping the future

• Startup Wins on Apple Podcasts
• Startup Wins on LinkedIn
• Startup Wins on Spotify

Hosted by Brandon Na, Managing General Partner of Good Peoples Ventures

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Startup Wins. Twice a month we share real stories and smart tips. Subscribe and join the journey.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Thank you for joining us here on Startup Wins. We have a great guest locally here in Austin. I'd love to introduce you here today. And uh his name is John Forbes. So John, uh, do you mind uh introducing yourself real quick?

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Brandon. I'm really excited for this. So I'm I'm John. I am a principal at a fund called Julian Capital. We're a pre-seed and seed deep tech fund investing in hardware startups. And we run a website called Deep Checks, which is the world's largest deep tech funding platform. We solve the matching problem in deep tech, where it's not clear who the right investors are to get in touch with. So we make it free to apply. Uh it takes about a minute to do so, and we help put early stage deep tech founders in touch with the right thesis fit investors.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Awesome. Awesome. And and John and I, our recent uh uh, I guess, uh residents of Austin, we found that this city is uh very cool for this industry. Um do you mind telling us a little bit about like how you got to Austin and maybe a little bit of your history, yeah, overall?

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Becoming a venture capitalist, I thought I was gonna be an entrepreneur. Before thinking I was gonna be an entrepreneur, I thought I was gonna be a rock star. So I grew up from the age of, I think I would have been eight or nine when I started my first rock band, and I've been in them my whole life as a lead singer, guitarist, bassist, play a bunch of instruments. Thought I would do music for the rest of my life until starting my first business as a high schooler. And so it's stayed as a constant, which I'll get back to in a moment. Come high school, I'd started my first business. It was a t-shirt company, grew it for about a year or so, sold it to a friend of mine, started another company that was a wellness app. And at that point, I got the bug for starting companies and knew that that's what I wanted to do. So went to school at Berkeley to go chase that dream. I was fortunate to join Dorm Room Fund, which is a student-run venture capital fund as a freshman, where I served as their youngest partner for four years, investing primarily in software startups, but really just getting to know what venture capital was in the first place before going to go chase the dream of startups again. So I went to college knowing that I wanted to start businesses. I wasn't quite I wasn't quite clear where I wanted to start them within, and found climate change to be that issue that I cared a lot about and spend a bunch of time academically within. And so I wound up taking some time off of school. I joined a company called Perimeter, which is a disaster coordination platform, pre-product market fit as a chief of staff, and spent about a year with them going from zero to product market fit, focusing primarily on sales and product work, but have many stories from from within there. Went back to school, but spent another couple years trying to start businesses myself and had another stint as a chief of staff before coming back and joining venture capital again with Julian Capital and Deep Checks. And what brought me to Austin was starting this job remote, having Austin be the live music capital of the world, and it being, in my eyes, I think the most or what is to be the most compelling place to start certain types of startups. So whether it's defense, manufacturing, robotics, perhaps even some areas in biotech. I think you know Austin was ranked number two for hardware funding in the last year, and we're seeing more and more later stage startups grow in the area. And so I took a bet on it as what I think is to be one of the best places to build a deep tech startup.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Uh I would completely agree, and that's why I decided to invest my time and my life here in the city. And I and I can't wait to kind of talk about that part in our conversation today, because I think Austin is something that a lot of people have discovered, but maybe not en masse or whatever the term is, uh like we see in the Bay Area. But I'd love to kind of focus a tad, if you don't mind, on your education, uh just because I think it's kind of fascinating. It's it makes sense where you know you're you're you're working on climate change because you're Berkeley grad. So so I imagine in at Berkeley, yeah, corporate is kind of like a uh uh, I don't know, uh profane term, you know, for a lot of the the Berkeleys. Yeah, exactly. Um so I'm kind of curious, like you went to Berkeley, I imagine for multiple reasons, you know, maybe because it's a good school, uh, but it does have this liberal bend to it, or you know, a liberal kind of uh I don't know what to describe, but you know what I mean. And and I'm curious how was that like when you're thinking I want to build companies? Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

So I mean, I think what's exceptional about Berkeley is it's a 40,000 person undergrad. So you can go about as liberal as you can possibly get, and you can go about as conservative as you can possibly get. And that's everything in between is going to exist on campus, and I saw that full spectrum. Um, you know, I so I think it's a place that above all challenges you to pursue truth and is this genuine melding of the minds, both by means of areas of academic interest, by areas of personal background. And that was largely my experience with it. Was like I was just thrown into this world of unfettered curiosity and such a disparate, I guess, disparate groups of people and backgrounds that they're coming from. And so, you know, from the combination of those two, it was really a great training ground to just broadly expand my worldview. And then, you know, I got to lean into the couple areas of campus that I think really prepared me well to go start businesses later on.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

That makes sense. That makes sense. Um now uh you're in VC, so we'll definitely we're gonna talk about that here in today's conversation because I think it will help a lot of our startup founders understand the mindset of a VC, right? And we haven't had a VC for a bit uh on the show, so this is a very welcome uh chat here today. Um but before we kind of jump into that conversation, you had at least one significant startup experience. So maybe we can, you know, highlight some things that you learned that you would maybe if you could redo again. Do you mind sharing? So, you know, if uh a startup founder listens, what do you think they could do better?

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Yeah, totally. So, I mean, the the most meaningful by far to me was was my time with Perimeter. Um, we were it was it was started out of the founder's experience having parents as first responders and firefighters and uh facing a large evacuation from a devastating wildfire in California. And so had started this company having realized that first responders don't have good tools to communicate interagency. They literally are drawing on whiteboards and calling each other on walkie-talkies to coordinate mass evacuations for large wildfires. And so built a tool to try to solve that problem. It was a tool that helps people coordinate between departments from emergency services to fire to law to others and to the public. The best means of communicating to the public was a large text that said, Turn here and go there. And it it really didn't make any sense if you were in the context of an evacuation. And so this tool helped solve both of those problems. I joined as a chief of staff before we had sales and before we really knew what the right product roadmap was. And so it was a year of literally driving into wildfires, talking to fire chiefs, chasing down sibbers, and trying to go through the maze of, you know, how do we find a product that's gonna have ubiquitous product market fit in a market where the types of end buyers by means of size of department, needs of departments vary so broadly in terms of the types of scenarios that they're responding to. And it was really challenging. We had many, many ups and downs, everything from competitors coming out with what we thought was going to be our exact roadmap to driving in the middle of a night through a wildfire to a sales call to have it totally blow up on us and everything in between. Um I think it was, you know, eventually we we figured out the right roadmap. The company's doing quite well now, but it took a lot of piece or of perseverance to you know sit through those moments, try to figure out what the right way to take the company was when we had so many competing directions that it could have taken us at any given time. And it really was just a crash course on how do you navigate the idea maze in what is a very challenging industry to go to market within?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, that makes sense. So you you stated something that I've heard a lot from uh founders uh as far as their advice to uh other founders, and that was perseverance. Um, and I think we had this little brief chat about this before our uh interview. Would you say that that's one of the keys uh for founders? Any other keys that you've seen in other founders that have been successful as you're evaluating them in at as a VC? Totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

So I mean, at Julian Capital, we have a couple distinct qualities that we look for in founders, which is mission-drivenness. Has your life led up to starting this and only this as the thing that you want to pursue? I think that's important because it is like staring into the abyss and eating glass a lot of times. So you sure want to have a good reason to go chase what you're chasing. Tied to that, I think, is absolutely agency and and perseverance. It is a lot of no's. It is a lot of staring against the world and not knowing whether or not your thesis is going to be correct. And it's a lot of uncertainty to shoulder. And so to have a high degree of perseverance and agency to continue to iterate to try things in the world to see what data comes back, I think is absolutely important. And tied to that, qualities that we care about are things like persuasiveness. Are you going to be the person that's gonna be able to hire the best talent in the world, that's gonna be able to close sales deals with companies that are much larger than you, that's gonna be able to fundraise some great funds? And within being persuasive, there's a quality that we look for, which we coin as having a high degree of thoughtfulness in the idea maze. So if you were to be asked a question around your go-to-market or your competition or your defensibility, have you thought through every single angle you possibly could and come to a premeditated decision on those things that you're going forth within? And so the combination of those factors mission drivenness, persuasiveness, agency, perseverance, thoughtfulness on the idea maze are things that certainly excite us.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Um one other thing that I've noticed recently in one uh startup that I've actually been working with uh part-time is I've noticed that there's a you know, the the startup culture is a very uh, you know, nimble, uh, very just everybody literally picks up uh different pieces of the puzzle and and works on it really hard, right? There's no structure, it's it's it's very just chaotic to a significant degree. And um, and I don't know what the right time frame, and obviously all industries are a little bit different, but I'm curious how you guys think about that as well, because I I find, you know, and I obviously you guys invest in early stage where it is chaotic, but are there any signals or any things do you think founders can do to kind of prove they know how to organize, or maybe, or is organization key, or is it is it is it is it a group of uh of you know team members that are just really good at dealing with chaos? Totally.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Yeah, I mean I think there's certainly things that you know point you towards the direction of having the capability. And so the best is have you started a business before and gone through it? I think you know, there's like I'm quite a bookworm and I studied a whole bunch about startups before I went and did it myself. And books don't help when you're getting punched in the face. And so I think having the experience of having started businesses before is one of the things that investors might lean on, is like, okay, you have you have gone through this before, you know what the experience is going to be like of this infinite learning and challenge machine that running a startup is. I think other things that matter are like, do you have uh industry expertise that's relevant to the go to market that you're going to pursue, or technical expertise that's relevant to the product that you're building? Or maybe it's even managerial expertise of the types of be of types of teams that you're going to build. I think across all of these dimensions and more, it's never a matter of somebody having to have all of these things in place. The more that you do, the more confident an investor might be off the bat. And for all that's lacking, the investor is making a bet on your personal growth curve to be able to overcome them. And so coming to the table with examples of, say, things you've done that you've been able to be world class at before, or things that you've done with excellence, or things that have required a really high growth curve, I think are other things that, in absence of, say, like 20 years of distinct industry experience in the thing that you're going for, you can prove the slope of your growth from the other things that you've that you've done in your life. So I think anything is along that spectrum is is incredibly valuable.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Definitely. I I caught one part of uh the different criterion that you you guys used to evaluate founders, and that was persuasiveness uh beyond the you know perseverance. And one thing, obviously, with your background is you graduated from Berkeley. Berkeley's uh one of the best universities in the country. Do you find, and this is something that I kind of examined with uh previous books that I was examining founders on and happy to share at some point. Um, do you feel like it's essential or do you think it's very helpful to graduate? I mean, it seems like it's an obvious thing to graduate from a top 25 school, but how has it in your career or perhaps even in your founders that you guys examine helped with the persuasiveness? Because that's a part of ethos, which is what Aristotle argues is how you persuade.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

Yeah, love the Aristotle quote. Um You know, I wish I wish that these things didn't matter in the world. Uh if if I if I had it my way, they wouldn't, and it would be of pure merit. But you know, the human mind likes to try to uh reduce. And so by having these signals of virtue, uh, it is a thing that helps pre-qualify because whether it's an investor you know looking at a startup or somebody hiring somebody or any other like qualification process, you know that these other institutions have very stringent vetting mechanisms. And so that's a thing that I think people index on as being of quality. And so the experience is loosely that you come from a great school and like people know that you've gone through this vetting process and it was a challenging thing to graduate from, and uh you kind of can get bucketed in a certain way. And so I think in the same way that uh the rest of humanity uh, you know, probably whether it's uh good or not, that we have these signals from the institutions that we come from, it is a thing that is there in the world, and so it has showed up for me in my life in that case, like it it certainly is looked upon favorably. But uh I don't think that that should be uh the evaluation metric we have of people. I would much rather evaluate people by things like character, by things like the actions that they've taken, by the things that they've personally accomplished, irrespective of the institutions that they come from. And so to answer it is certainly a thing that exists in this world, and I I have noticed its its benefits, but I think there are there are other ways that we can that we can judge.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Well, statistics will back you. So what I did is I examined 500 founders, or sorry, around 500-ish startups that became unicorns, and um happy to share it with you, like I said, uh at a later point. But it did actually say that universities or or elite universities were not the key. Um, it's always been my hypothesis that it is one of the biggest keys, but it was arguing with the data at least. Um, still need to complete this, but um, that it was more of a technical acumen that that seemed to show up, which may be an indication of of prowess in terms of academics or or intelligence. But um, yeah, I I still I I'm not 100% sure, but I would agree with you. I I hate the fact that it is, but I think you you're right, it does reflect a lot of the things that are are very positive with with startups. Okay, well, let's dive in a little bit into the VC world because again, today I'd love to you know chat um about the industry because we haven't had that conversation for a while. So, first off, how do you feel about the industry? Because the industry is something that I would say last year, my hypothesis was it's broken. Um what what what what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Can I can I ask why you think it was it was broken as of last year?

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Yeah, well, I mean, it may still be broken and or not. I mean, maybe maybe today we can have a little uh mini debate, but it it was more of a thought around the fact that greed prevails and that the majority of VC is in and this is our well, it was a thesis that we were developing to build a different type of VC, basically, is what we were calling it last year. And when greed is the ultimate purpose, like you know, getting as many uh uh you know returns or or whatever it is, you know, what's the ROI of each investment? Because I mean, naturally, it makes sense. Like, what does a VC do? We you know, we invest so that we can get a higher return. But if that's the primary, you know, um focus, then it isn't necessarily about the founder. And then, you know, why combinator, um, as we all know, uh, came in and invested less into the the founder and then you know focused a bit more on the education of the founder and the network and all that other stuff. So the again, the the thesis was more about it's about greed, and and it it seemed to prevail as far as um our response when we actually went out and reached out to folks to become general partners. There was a lot of agreement with that, or at least we saw it resonate with a lot of people. So that in essence, you know in a very verbose way was why we said it was broken.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Yeah, interesting. I would yeah, I I I I may disagree, so I think this will be fun. But I, you know, if you look at the incentive and you get the outcome for anything, the incentive of a venture fund is to you know, perform its fiduciary responsibility and return as best as it possibly can to LPs. So is that of a corporation to return its best to its shareholders? And are there negative externalities of business because those are the optimization functions? Absolutely. And are there you know perverse uh in in incentives and people that don't play nice 100% that certainly exists in the ecosystem? But I wouldn't say that you know, attempting to have a fund return as uh as as well as it can is greedy. It's it's the purpose of the business. And I would flip it and say that like you know, if you really cared about something like the best outcome possible for the founders or the largest business that they can make, or the degree of impact that they can have the world, that's directly proportional to the size of the business that they're building. And venture is a financing vehicle that is built for this small sliver of businesses that are meant to be multi-billion dollar businesses. And in fact, most businesses probably shouldn't pursue venture dollars. But the ones that really want to achieve a large amount of scale and grow very quickly and become very large and have the impact that they want in the world, it's the right vehicle for them. And so I I think it would certainly be greedy if there was a founder that wasn't in that archetype of business that was pursuing venture dollars, if not greedy, misaligned. But for those that want to build a very large business in a short amount of time and have the impact that they want in the world, I think it's just people following the incentives of their business and delivering their fiduciary responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

It makes sense. I can't disagree with that. I uh this might resonate more with the liberal uh constituency of Berkeley, but uh like for example, one thing that I think is a very fascinating phenomenon is we see a lot of people become billionaires who are founders, for example. And the argument, probably from a liberal standpoint, would be um that I guess per person, it seems like that proportionally is not fair, where historically, you know, CEOs, for example, or founders would be paid in the millions. Now, again, they're worth billions because there's this expediting of um the path, I would say, where you know, they the speed to which they get to billions and billions of valuation. Is that the correct thing, especially if if if the company ends up failing at some point, right? Because you the venture capital firm pumps the money in, gets the returns for the LPs, and you know, the valuation is very high. So win-win for the for the LPs, the venture capital firm, and then the founder, and then the founder leaves, you know. So so I guess that that might be more of the argument, but but no, I agree with you. I I think that you know it is the food fiduciary responsibility. But what what do you think about that? Do you think too much money's landing in the founders, or no? Or I mean it's it's probably hard to say as a VC, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:34

So yeah, I'll uh I'll hold my tongue on uh um and say that tax law is complicated and there's you know always always more room to improve the systems we work with in.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Got it, got it. Well, uh you guys focus on deep tech, as you mentioned earlier. Um tell us a little bit about that. So most of the people I would argue probably don't know a ton about deep tech. So what's deep tech exactly? And then I'd love to follow up with another question.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Totally. So we define deep tech as companies that have a hardware component or technical process that is challenging to replicate. So that could be like a biological or chemical process. But we're investing in companies that are deploying physical infrastructure in some way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Okay, so very hardware-oriented.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Yep. Or biological. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Okay. And then you also mentioned um climate tech. So is it climate tech plus deep tech, or is that something that's together in your guys' mind?

SPEAKER_02 22:31

So for the to climate tech, probably a subset of deep tech. And within climate tech, obviously there's things that are software and there's things that are hardware. So we would just do the things that are hardware or hardware plus software. And so for me, yeah, it was kind of climate tech was loosely my personal chew-in to this world. And it is now a subset of all that we do. So we operate across sectors like energy, chips, manufacturing, robotics, biospace. The list goes on every every sector that has uh hardware businesses within it.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Okay. Could you give us a couple examples uh to help maybe the general populace kind of understand as well, like uh uh like what they do and why you invested in them per se?

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Yeah, totally. Um one of our favorites is a local Austin company at Alo Atomics. They're building modular data modular nuclear reactors for data centers. It was a an investment before before my time, but but certainly one of our favorites. Another local Austin-based one is called Blitz Panel, and they are doing the automation of control panel design. And so when you go to get a control panel done, it is a surprisingly slow and onerous process. So they've made a CAD-like software to make that easier and then are automating the production of these panels to bring them to customers faster and at a and at a better price.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

That makes sense. Um the the data center company sounds very interesting. Uh I'm just more familiar with it because obviously a lot of us are trying to pay attention to AI, and data center seems to be like the the main thing that that's across the entire world. Um that that's a pretty exciting industry, I imagine. And you it's one of your guys' favorites. Can you tell us a little more about that? I'm I'm just kind of curious because you said nuclear reactors, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Or yeah, totally. So yeah, they've um you know, they've they've built these reactors that are sized correctly for the amount of energy load that a data center is going to need. And so if you're a data center coming online, you're met with challenging, if not like six to seven year interconnection cues to try to get power from the grid, and that power not might not be reliable enough for the reliability that that a data center might need. And so, what other power sources are you left with? They've come up with a a reactor design that is uh cost competitive to all others and gives you the confidence of base load power that you need to be able to run a data center and are building a facility to build these reactors to deploy upon them.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

And I know this was before your time, but one element I think a lot of founders probably don't realize, uh minus the fact that they could just Google a bunch of venture capitalists uh is how you meet these founders and how do you source these deals. Can you tell us a little bit about like where are you finding these, you know, fantastic founders or or how are how are you able to evaluate them? I mean, maybe we can get to that second part later, but how where are you meeting these folks? Is it is it networking events, is it pitch contests? Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

Yep, finding great founders is is all that keeps me up at night. So we we we have a couple different ways that we do. The first one, if if you're a deep tech founder listening, is as mentioned, we run this deep checks platform. And so we make it easy to get in touch with the right Thesis Fit investor for free. It takes about a minute. And so by virtue of running that, we're users of the platform ourselves. And I look at every single deck that comes through and I take meetings with with ones that are exciting to me. So oftentimes we'll get people directly through there. We also get direct applications to our website, Julian.capital. We look through every single one of those as well. And then beyond that, other channels include things like you know, investors will share uh companies back and forth with with one another. That's that's quite a common one. We'll follow precede and seed accelerators, uh like SOSV hacks or discipulus or or or others that operate at like a stage earlier than us. And then from there, you know, we're doing everything we possibly can to try to find people. So we'll do things like track raises that happen on Crunch Paste, or you know, I'll spend time at at relevant events locally in in Austin. Uh and so we we throw spaghetti at the wall and and hope that we are able to meet great founders kind of through a number of channels. But we try to be open and receptive no matter how you try to find us. And personally, you can always send me a cold email at john at deepchecks.vc and I'll sure take a close look.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

And and you mentioned right at the beginning, you take meetings with people who excite you. So what excites you, John?

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Yeah. So I mean, there's this, there's those combinations of of factors that we that we mention in in a founder. Largely those come out during a first call. And so I think the question points towards what is a deck that will get us excited? Because that's generally the thing that we're that we're taking a first meeting based upon. And I think the first thing that we'll look for is, you know, from Julian, our general partner's background in marketing, he has deep expertise in what we coin as market pull, which is you are solving a problem that when a customer sees what you are doing, it is so self-evident that they need it that they're willing to endure whatever switching costs are required to you know procure that product, which in something like Deep Tech can be especially high. You might be changing supply chains, you might be buying new equipment, you might be changing your manufacturing floor, you might be testing a new material and that introduces risk to the thing that you're making. And so oftentimes the benefit needs to be orders of magnitude better than what the existing solution is to solve that problem today. And so I look for startups that resemble this. They have a problem that we can identify as a burning problem for the customers that they are solving it for, and that their solution is generally orders of magnitude better, whether on price or performance or um, you know, whatever else it may be compared to the status quo, that we believe market pull is going to materialize from there. And then from there we look to things like is the market large enough? Do we think this is the right team to solve it? Do we think the go-to-market allows you to build a large enough business within the timeframe of a venture fund? But we we generally start from that market pull question, look at the team behind it, and then seek to answer the rest of the questions from there.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Okay. Well, are there on the flip side mistakes that people are doing, you know, in the communication, let's say to email you perhaps, or um even at networking events saying the wrong things, um any any anything that are turnoffs when it comes to to meeting you or or your firm?

SPEAKER_02 28:59

Yeah, um mistakes. I it doesn't happen too often, but um yeah, I guess so sometimes going right into pitch mode can can be a little bit off-putting. We we spend our days in pitch mode, and so I I like to if I'm especially if I'm in person, I'd prefer to just get to know you and then you know come out in conversation instead of going with I'm making blah blah blah, you know. So I'm sure that everybody else feels the same. You don't want me to be like, I am a VC, whatever. Um so yeah, I think just in person, keeping it personable is is nice. And aside from that, in communications, I think things that stand out from founders are when you are quick to respond, even if it's just a acknowledge receipt, I'll get back to you later. Like it it it it just it goes a long way. And being thoughtful in your responses are are are another thing that stand out to us.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

I hate to use this word, but authenticity comes to mind. So people who are authentic. Well, um, you know, the famous the famous Elon Musk, who obviously has the Giga Factory uh just north of me, right here. But um when I first started listening to him or or seeing him in video form or even listening to him on podcasts, he didn't seem to be the most eloquent person when I first was listening. And when listening more deeply, you you you know, you get to the you know meat and bones or meat uh of what he's saying. But um do founders sometimes come off a little bit awkward? Uh does that matter? Because you know, authenticity seems to be more important. So obviously, if somebody's kind of fumbling their words, does it matter to you? Um and and because I mean the other thing that I think you probably have uh challenges on is time. And and so frankly, the minute or two that they get to spend with you, they might have to say the right thing. So does that ever come up as an issue? Or how how does communicating either in person or via email pan out, I guess, for you?

SPEAKER_02 31:06

Totally. Yeah. I mean, I I think for the types of businesses that we work with, the communication is one of the hardest. You're probably a world expert in a very distinct field and are are likely to be quite technical. And like there can be like a lot of times I have to be educated on the thing that people are are building before I can come to an opinion of it on my own. So I think that like I empathize a lot with how challenging it is to be so steeped in the slice of the world that you've been operating within, and then have to go out and educate what could be a layman around the entire nuance of the industry. And so I think it's it's a challenge that that founders learn to overcome throughout the process of getting reps and things like fundraising conversations and sales and hiring. And I think, you know, the things that matter are, you know, you might start wherever you are in in your communication style, but like learning how to be a good scientific communicator and being persuasive enough to hire people and to sell to people and to to fundraise from people are things that matter. And so it's a you know, wherever you are starting from, I think you know, as long as you're able to grow into proficiency there, just as important as growing into proficiency in a whole other number of dimensions, um, it'll you'll you'll be just fine.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

These are good. I I love the fact that you're being very positive. Um, but one one thing that sometimes comes to mind is the Achilles heel that perhaps, or maybe there are more than just one. Um, do you find anything that uh founders trip on, like you know, on the converse, because you were saying, like, you know, building teams or being able to persuade persuade people to come on teams. What you know, what are some of those things that are really displayable? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Totally. So I mean, uh things that we'll see often is like being too steeped in the science and not the business outcome. So you've you've built X and all you want to talk about are its performance metrics as compared to Y, but you're not talking about the reason why a customer is going to adopt it in the frame of the business outcome it has for them and how it integrates into their process. I think that's a very common one in deep tech, is like leaning into the novelty of the technology that you are building while not being able to connect it to the business case is is one thing that I think um can can happen often. Others include, I mean, I I to the to the point of hiring, you know, as a leader, you are convincing somebody to put their life's work in, maybe not their life's work, but like their vocation in your hands. And so are you a person that they want to do that with? And that comes down to things like confidence in you. It comes down to your character, it comes down to your belief in the mission of of what the company is is doing. And so, you know, I think the the absence of the qualities that can build that confidence for somebody will be things that will get them to not want to join your team. And so th those are those are areas that I think we can we can see as well. And then on the fundraising side, I think another you know, strong negative can be either overpromising or overselling instead of being direct and honest with VCs or a lack of thoughtfulness in the answers that you're giving and kind of brushing through details that might have more nuance that should be talked through.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

If your calendar isn't already set, you're missing out on startup wins. Industry leaders, top advisors, and incredible tips await. Come back for future great episodes and entertaining guests, and come back for more insider strategies and incredible stories from the brightest VCs, founders, and operator experts. We're bringing you the best in the business twice a month. Hit that bell and stay winning with startup wins. See you soon.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

And that was part one of the interview with venture capitalist John Forbes, principal at Julian Capital, and general manager of Deep Checks, the best place for deep tech founders to reach thesis fit investors. Look out for the next episode with me and John as we continue to talk about how VCs think and even get a little personal, as we always do on startup wins. I'm your host, Brandon Na. Hope you're having a wonderful day.