Mignot: Personal risk as a founder builds essential VC empathy
Martin Mignot · Index's Martin Mignot on Sourcing Rocketship Companies, Evaluating Founders and His Attitude Towards Risk At The Early Stage · Feb 1, 2016 · at 4:29
Index Ventures partner Martin Mignot discusses how his previous experience running an e-commerce business informed his perspective and empathy as an early-stage venture investor.
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“I think that the most important thing is really that you get to know and see the world, you know, through the eyes of an entrepreneur being on the other side of the table. And most importantly, I think really feeling the stress of and what taking risk really means you know, seeing your bank account, you know, going slowly down to zero for all of those, you know, those, this hard, hard, hard earned money that, that you've been spending you know, spending a lot of hours at the bank before to save and then you see disappearing, you know, that that's, you know, it's a stressful, you know, it's a stressful situation. And all of the challenges that, that, that get around with, you know, having a live operation with customers and all the issues that you get from that. So, so that's so I think that gives you just a lot of empathy for what entrepreneurs are trying to achieve.”
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