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Willis: Wanting to work for a founder is a strong investment signal

Tyler Willis · 20VC: Tyler Willis on How To Be Innovative With Customer Acquisition and The Future Of Innovation · Feb 17, 2016 · at 8:31

Angel investor Tyler Willis shares his primary evaluation heuristic for assessing high-quality early-stage startup founders.

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“In fact, the kind of easy heuristic I use for that is, would I want to, am I tempted to go work for this person? You know, I've got all these things that I'm doing my own, and I control my own day and my own schedule, and that's fantastic, and, you know, I can I can run my own companies and do investments and all these things that are Like lovely parts of my life that I really enjoy. And if this is a person who I go, huh, maybe it actually would be really fun to like, you know, go in and really roll up my sleeves and work with them for a year or two, or four or 10. That's the kind of, you know, thought in the back of my mind where I go, well, I'm not in a position now where I want to go work for somebody, but I sure as heck would, should invest in that because that's a really good signal that this person's high quality.”

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