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Taggar: Venture Investors Need Operational Experience to Develop True Founder Empathy

Harj Taggar · 20VC: Biggest Takeaways From Working With Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, Why You Should Put Off Hiring For As Long As Possible & Why Seed Stage Investing Is All About Optimising The Top Of The Funnel with Harj Taggar, Founder & CEO @ Triplebyte · Jan 20, 2017 · at 15:56

Harj Taggar, CEO of Triplebyte and former Y Combinator partner, discusses what criteria founders should prioritize when selecting venture capital investors.

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“I'm a pretty strong believer that operational experience is pretty important to have in investors, and the reason is, and I think this is another thing that made sort of Paul and sort of Jessica great founders of YC or great investors of Y Cominature is that they had deep empathy for founders. Like, they understood how difficult and how stressful starting a company is, and it Even if you don't have, I don't think you need to have great success as a, as an operator to be a good investor, but I think you need to have deep empathy for how difficult it is for founders and how sort of pressurized they are all the time. And I think that's something that's difficult to have when you sort of haven't been through a startup yourself. So I think it's a fair proxy for that empathy to look for these are the operational track record of an investor in lieu of that.”

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