| Start-up success can be much easier if... A. You went to the same ivy league schools as VCs B. You have a certain look C. They give you the opportunity to work with them & you take advantage/work the opportunity to get funded. Case in point, while I was participating in an incubator, there was a 20 year old mentor. He was mentoring a 40 something first time female founder. He had millions in funding and he went to sell his company for millions. How did that happen when he had no previous experience. Well for one he graduated from the same top school as his VC (one of the biggest), who in which gave him a job working at the firm, who then funded his company and steered it to a huge sale using his huge/immense network. Start-ups can be very unfair if you don't look the part, gone to the same ivy league school, given an opportunity to work with X huge VC & make the most of it and or struck gold/got lucky by publishing the next big thing you had no idea would take off. VC is definitely a boys club filled with all the popular people from your high school who left you out & talked trash about everyone who didn't fit their part. |
There is an argument for prescreening, but having been part of the interview process for a high profile YC company in its early days, I can say that the weight placed on "likeness" is very high.
The correlation between likeness and competence, not so much.