[mbesto]

> How is such a judgement made, though?

That's exactly what the parent was saying, investors can only draw that conclusion based on pedigree and experience. "Oh they ran the software at the warehouses in Amazon, they must be experts in that, here's $5M for your warehouse management software". Unfortunately this often gets conflated with pattern matching that doesn't always correlate with a person's pedigree and their ability to "organize labor, manage money, define the product, find customers, ect.". In other words, you're both saying the same thing.

Investors telling the public that they can appropriately assess startup teams in a 1-hour pitch is a glittering lure to increase deal flow, not something that makes one investor necessarily smarter than an other.

[gwbas1c]

"Oh they ran the software at the warehouses in Amazon, they must be experts in that, here's $5M for your warehouse management software"

That's only 1/3rd; the other 1/3rd is "Successfully founded xyzCorp that had $xxxx / year revenue and sold for $x,xxx,xxx after 5 years."

Investing in a founding team where the founders have a solid history of starting successful companies isn't relying on pedigree.

The final 1/3rd is looking at the team dynamic during a pitch. Is the team on the same page? Are they happy with each other? Does one person do all the talking?

[20yrs_no_equity]

> Investing in a founding team where the founders have a solid history of starting successful companies isn't relying on pedigree.

If that's what they were doing then there would be a lot of talk about how those who have never founded a company can never get funding.

[hanniabu]

Is it seen as beneficial when one person does the talking?

[mbesto]

Yes. Regardless of equal equity, having a dominant player in the management team is highly valuable.