Gil: Product-market fit matters more than team quality in early-stage investing
Elad Gil · Elad Gil: How to Spot a Billion-Dollar Startup Before the Rest of the World · May 13, 2025 · at 2:42
Investor Elad Gil explains his core two-dimensional framework for evaluating startups and why market demand supersedes founder caliber.
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“I think really the way I think about investing in general is that there's two dimensions that really matter. The first dimension is what people call product market fit, or is there a strong demand for whatever it is you're building? And then secondarily I look at the team and I think most early stage people flip it. They look at the team first and how good is a founder. And obviously I've started two companies myself. I think the founder side is incredibly important and the talent side is incredibly important, but I've seen amazing people get crushed by terrible markets and I've seen reasonably mediocre teams do extremely well in what are very good markets.”
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