Daniel E. Reid runs Mindset Ventures. He's been on a podcast, and he's told me some stuff that's different from what most founders would hear from investors. Let's break it down.

While there are some investors who care about the university you went to, the truth is not all of them do. Daniel Ibri does not care if you went to an Ivy League school or if you went to one of the top universities in the nation. What he actually looks for is how deep your understanding of the sector is, how long you've worked in the problem, and what experience has led you to this idea.

What I can appreciate about investors like Daniel is that their focus is on what you actually have done as a founder. They care more about your past and the work you put in to a degree, because there are some founders who will go to top-tier schools, but then they have absolutely nothing to show for it. They just have that degree. If you're a founder who's done the work, who has some connections, who has laid a real foundation and made some progress and has made impact, you're going to have a better chance with an investor like Daniel Ibri.

A really big misconception that some founders have about venture capital is that it moves really, really quick. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you can get term sheets signed overnight, but that's not always the norm. It usually takes some time. This is because the right investors have a process. They want you to essentially jump through hoops. In any scenario, wouldn't this be the one that makes the most sense? If you're coming to this firm asking for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of their money, it makes sense that you would have to do some things to get that money.

Mindset Ventures runs a structured investment process. They analyze dozens of variables and build a full investment memo that goes to the committee. They're specifically trying to remove emotion from the decision so the whole team can poke holes in it.

To translate this for founders, your story has to be able to hold up in front of all the investors that are part of the team at Mindset Ventures. While Daniel IBri might be your connection in, you still have to impress all the investors that are a part of this conversation. This might seem like a bad thing, but it's actually not. The good thing is that when you get a yes for Mindset Ventures, you know it's a complete yes because you now know that the entire team is behind you. Even the ones that might not have believed in you in the beginning are still going to be supportive of you because they respect the team's decisions.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Anybody can come up with an idea. Anybody can develop a concept, especially now using AI. Developing ideas has never been easier. If you want to have an idea, you can tell AI what you're really good at and the problem that you've solved and a little bit of your backstory in terms of your experience. I will give you 20 different product ideas.

Having ideas today isn't as useful as it might have been 50 years ago. What matters now is your execution. Investors like Daniel are not betting on your idea. They're betting on whether you're the right person and you're building the right thing at the right time. The why you and why now are the questions that matter most before he ever takes a look at the deck.

This is the level of investing where your character matters the most, because these are the investors that are going to do research on you. They're going to look at your past. They're going to look at your decisions. They're going to really do the due diligence on you as an individual to make sure that you're the type of founder that they need to put money into. I say this all the time, but I feel like it's worth repeating: you as a founder have to be ready to pivot, to switch things up, to make changes. The right investors will support you along the way.

This is just some of the insight that I got from this investor. I love sharing these insights and these tactics and all the different strategies that come from the conversations, because I understand that most founders will never get this close to an investor to get the analysis and the depth that I can have with an investor. Whether it's on the podcast, at events, or simply in emails, I get to talk to a lot of investors about what they want in a startup that they're going to fund.

If you're a founder and you're ready to become more fundable, schedule a fundability session with me now, and we can talk about what your path looks like.