the founder lens
crazy is just a word for a need you have not understood yet.
someone told me today about the one that got away. a company everyone now uses, that he passed on because it sounded like the craziest idea he had ever heard. strangers sleeping in strangers' homes. obviously insane. obviously wrong.
the miss rewired how he invests. he stopped asking does this make sense to me, and started asking why does this founder believe this is inevitable. the first question measures the idea against your own small imagination. the second tries to see what the founder sees.
the best investors are not predicting the future. they are reading the present more carefully than everyone else, and taking founders seriously when the founder understands a structural need the rest of us have not noticed yet.
crazy is just a word for a need you have not understood yet.
when something sounds insane to you, are you sure it is wrong, or are you just not the one who can see it?