Bajaj: First 30–40 minutes reliably determine whether to back a founder
Avnish Bajaj · 10 Unicorns, 5 IPOs, 26 Acquisitions – India’s OG VC, Avnish Bajaj On Why Only Founders Matter · Mar 21, 2025 · at 1:13:33
Avnish Bajaj describes his heuristics and timing for evaluating startup founders.
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“It takes me about 30 to 40 minutes of my first meeting to figure out if this is a, it may not be fully yes, but that I'm getting excited, right? Then you have to do a lot more work and it has, there are, I would say, 20 to 30% of the time, I'll end up in a situation where I get excited and then it changes later. Very rarely, almost never, is it a situation where 30, 40 minutes into it, I'm not really thinking I should be doing it and later it changes. If that is the case, I have generally gotten it wrong.”
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