The meeting always plays out the same way.
A partner at some blue-chip firm leans back in their Aeron chair, offers a knowing smile, and says: "The founder has a really interesting background. Stanford CS, then early at Stripe. Their co-founder was at Harvard with the Figma team."
As if this is the clincher. As if this collection of brand names should automatically open my checkbook.
I nod politely while mentally checking out of the conversation.
Let me be clear about something: you went to an Ivy. You did your obligatory tour at Google. Your uncle works at Blackrock and made the intro.
Cool story.
That might get you through the door with the old guard of venture capital. The firms that still believe pedigree is a proxy for potential. The investors who'd rather be wrong with Harvard grads than right with outsiders.
But it won't get you in with me.
Not because I have some philosophical opposition to elite credentials. I graduated from Columbia after all. But because I've spent enough time on both sides of the educational and economic divide to know that the most predictive signals of founder success have nothing to do with where you went to school.
They have everything to do with who you became while no one was watching.
Most people in venture don't know this about me, but I flunked out of college. Not the glamorous kind of dropout story that gets polished into tech folklore. Just the ordinary kind: a kid who wasn't ready, couldn't focus, and watched his carefully constructed plan collapse under the weight of academic probation.
I washed rental cars at Enterprise by day and rebuilt my future in community college classrooms by night.
That detour wasn't a setback. It was an education no prestigious university could provide. It showed me what real determination looks like: single parents studying after putting kids to bed, veterans transitioning to civilian life, first-generation students figuring it out alone.
No one was there building a network or joining the right clubs or securing the summer internships that their parents' friends had arranged. They were there because they believed education could transform their circumstances.
By the time I transferred to Columbia, worked at Lazard, and eventually started Daring Ventures, I had developed a radar for substance that cuts through the noise of credentials. And I had seen firsthand how the venture ecosystem systematically overlooks extraordinary talent that doesn't come in familiar packaging.
There are five qualities that tell me more about a founder's potential than any resume ever could:
The founder who impresses me isn't waiting for permission to build. They're not treating fundraising as validation. They've been cobbling together solutions with whatever resources they have available.
They understand that venture capital isn't a prize for having a good idea. It's accelerant for execution that's already showing promise.
I remember talking to a founder who had bootstrapped their company for two years before even considering outside capital. They had customers, revenue, and a working product held together with duct tape and determination. When I asked why they waited so long to raise, they looked genuinely confused: "Why would I have raised money before proving the concept works?"
That founder wasn't playing the venture game. They were building a business. The distinction matters.
The most dangerous founders aren't the ones with the most impressive technical credentials. They're the ones with intimate knowledge of the problem they're solving.
The founder who watched their parent struggle with medical bureaucracy for years before building a healthcare navigation platform.
The founder who personally experienced the financial exclusion their fintech company now addresses.
The founder who lived in the gaps between broken systems and decided to build the bridge themselves.
These builders aren't approaching markets as abstract TAM calculations. They're approaching them with the conviction and insight that comes from personal experience. They understand their customers because they were their customers.
When someone like that tells me they've identified a market inefficiency, I listen differently than when it comes from someone who spotted an opportunity in a McKinsey report.
We've created a founder archetype that's become almost religious: the visionary disruptor, the tech celebrity, the person building to be on magazine covers.
But the strongest founders I've backed aren't interested in tech fame. They're obsessed with fixing something broken, with building something that matters. The public recognition is, at best, a useful tool for advancing the mission. At worst, it's a distraction they actively avoid.
There's a clarity that comes with this focus. When decisions aren't filtered through "What will make the best story?" or "How will this play on Twitter?" but simply through "Will this solve the problem better?", the execution becomes sharper.
I once asked a founder why they weren't more active building their personal brand. Their response stays with me: "I'm trying to build a company that outlasts me, not be a celebrity who happens to have a company."
That kind of clarity? Rare. And lethal.
Silicon Valley has become its own kind of aristocracy, complete with unwritten rules, secret handshakes, and tribal markers.
YC. Stanford. Facebook. The approved path.
But the founders who truly innovate are often those who didn't have access to the guidebook. They didn't attend the right schools, work at the right companies, or build in the right zip codes.
Perhaps they went to community college like I did. Perhaps no college at all. Perhaps they built their first products while working full-time jobs because they couldn't afford to live on ramen in San Francisco for a year.
These founders bring perspective that can't be taught in entrepreneurship programs. They see opportunities the insiders miss because they haven't been trained to look in the same places as everyone else.
When I launched Wall Street After Community College, our program to help non-traditional students break into finance, we discovered talent that most elite firms systematically overlooked. Not because these students lacked capacity, but because the system wasn't built to recognize their potential.
The same pattern exists in venture. The most interesting companies are often built by people the ecosystem wasn't designed to fund.
There's been a fundamental confusion in startup culture. Somewhere along the way, we started treating fundraising as the win rather than the beginning of the real work.
I'm looking for founders who understand that capital is just gas in the tank. It's necessary for the journey but meaningless without a clear destination and the ability to navigate there.
The founder who spends more time with customers than with potential investors.
The founder who treats pitch meetings as a necessary distraction from the actual building.
The founder who raises what they need, not what they could, so they can get back to work.
That focus is increasingly rare in an ecosystem that celebrates funding amounts more than customer outcomes. But it's the mindset that builds companies with staying power.
If you've been overlooked because you didn't "look the part", if you've had to work twice as hard to get half as far, if you've built without the benefit of warm introductions and prestigious networks, you haven't just overcome obstacles.
You've developed strengths most founders never have to cultivate.
You've learned to:
Persevere when no one was cheering you on
Build with limited resources
Navigate systems not designed for you
Recognize opportunities others miss
Execute without external validation
These capacities can't be taught in any accelerator. They have to be lived. And they create a foundation for company-building that's far more durable than any credential.
This perspective now forms the core of our investment thesis at Daring Ventures: Resilience trumps resume. Every time.
We look for signal in negative space, what's not visible on the LinkedIn profile. The gaps, transitions, and unconventional choices often reveal more about someone's capacity for founder-market fit than any prestigious internship.
Our focus is software that amplifies fundamentally human strengths: judgment, creativity, trust. The founders best positioned to build these tools are often those who've had to develop these capacities through adversity.
If someone has built their own legitimacy, navigated systems not designed for them, and emerged not just intact but stronger, that's someone who won't fold when the inevitable startup crises hit. That's someone who understands that perseverance isn't a temporary state but a permanent attribute.
That's alpha.
The venture industry congratulates itself on pattern recognition. But what if the patterns we've been trained to recognize are fundamentally limited?
What if they're missing the most extraordinary builders because those people don't fit our preconceptions of what founders should look like, sound like, or come from?
The strongest founders I know didn't develop resilience through optional challenges. They developed it because circumstances demanded it, because giving up wasn't an option, because they had responsibilities beyond themselves.
That's the kind of foundation that survives market downturns, funding winters, and competitive threats.
There's another advantage to backing founders who've been systematically overlooked: they're used to being underestimated.
The founder who went to community college before building a fintech company that serves the underbanked.
The founder who taught herself to code while working night shifts before creating an AI platform that now powers enterprise workflows.
The founder who never had connections but built relationships through pure execution and integrity.
These builders have dealt with skepticism their entire careers. They've had to prove themselves repeatedly when others were given the benefit of the doubt. They've had to be twice as good to get half as far.
That experience creates a chip on the shoulder, yes. But it also creates founders who don't need external validation to maintain conviction. Who aren't derailed by rejection. Who know how to keep building when no one is watching.
The venture ecosystem has perfected pattern matching based on superficial signals: the right schools, the right previous employers, the right vocabulary, the right networks.
But the most extraordinary founders I've backed don't fit those patterns. They emerged from the cracks in the system.
They didn't start with warm introductions to tier-one VCs. They started with intimate knowledge of problems that needed solving and the tenacity to build solutions regardless of who noticed.
When I compare their execution to founders from more traditional backgrounds, the difference is stark. They don't pivot at the first sign of resistance. They don't expect the path to be smooth. They don't need external validation to maintain conviction.
Pedigree is the weakest signal in venture capital. It's the lazy investor's shortcut, the pattern-matching crutch that lets you feel safe while systematically overlooking extraordinary talent.
I'm not saying credentials are meaningless. But they're table stakes at best, actively misleading at worst.
The founders who will define the next era of technology aren't waiting to be discovered in Stanford dorm rooms or Google alumni groups. They're already building, often where no one is looking, driven by necessity and conviction rather than pattern-matched potential.
If you're a founder who's been overlooked because you didn't check the right boxes or know the right people, good.
You've developed something more valuable: hard-won insight, unmatched determination, and the kind of resilience pedigree can't buy.
That's who we back. That's who builds companies that last.