the "founders over ideas" thing breaks down when the idea requires domain expertise you can't fake.
watching someone "reason under pressure" in a pitch meeting tells you almost nothing about whether they can navigate the actual operational hell of their specific industry.
example: you could watch me explain tokenization mechanics and think i'm sharp. do i know why every real estate tokenization attempt since 2015 failed? do i understand mortgage servicer incentives? can i explain why title insurance exists?
that knowledge doesn't come from "reasoning ability." it comes from years inside the machine. the best founders have both: they can think clearly AND they've done the reps in their domain. but if i had to pick one, i'd take the person who's lived in the problem for 5 years over the person who's generically smart every time.
ideas aren't cheap when they require 1000 hours of context to even formulate correctly. the diligence question is: has this person put in those hours?
h/t: @KyleSamani @nic_carter
bringing American economic hegemony onchain. co-founder // ceo @ManifestFinance
prev co-founder @ roostify (acq by CoreLogic)
🇺🇸 I’m betting on America