[KedarMhaswade]

Kahneman attributes a lot to 'luck' of what experts achieve especially when it comes to predicting something. I am a bit surprised that PG does not give 'shear luck' its fair share.

I am assuming that many (most?) of the startup founders, when they are being interviewed by the potential investors, are 'complete strangers'. By focusing objectively on ideas than subjectively or intuitively on people doing them, they believe that they mitigate the so-called risk. I am not convinced that by judging people rather than by judging ideas (in supposedly short amount of time) the chances of succeeding go up, because if we are often wrong judging ideas, what makes us good at judging people who are ever changing too?

Of course, there is an undeniable 'credit history' part wherein if a 'successful' founder comes back with another idea, many investors are ready to 'shower money' on her/him -- I don't find anything majorly wrong with that attitude, but that alone does not guarantee success, I believe.

[marcosdumay]

That may be one of the very few context where judging people is easier than ideas.

Ideas that grow huge look completely random, except when you happen to know the one or two details that make them promising. And you can never know if you know all of those details.

Almost all people that make something big share some few treats that most people lack, what makes this a useful filter. Of course people can change, what reduces the effectiveness of the filter, but it's still better than random.