In venture capital, the debate never truly ends. Is success driven by the brilliance of an idea, the timing of a market, or the superiority of a product? After decades of data, capital deployed across thousands of startups, and countless post-mortems, the answer has become remarkably consistent: it is neither the idea, nor the market, nor even the product that best predicts success. It is the founder.

This conclusion is not philosophical. It is empirical. Investors who have analysed large datasets of venture outcomes, including Ali Tamaseb in Super Founders, converge on the same insight: exceptional outcomes are disproportionately driven by a specific founder profile. This is why, across France, the UK and the United States, experienced VCs often spend more time evaluating founders than they do business plans.

Understanding this dynamic is essential for anyone navigating the transatlantic startup ecosystem.

1. The Founder as the Primary Risk Variable

From the outside, venture capital can appear product-centric. Pitch decks emphasise market size, competitive dynamics and technology. Yet internally, most investment committees frame risk very differently. Markets evolve, products pivot and strategies change. What remains constant is the individual or team making decisions under uncertainty.

Data shows that so-called “super founders” tend to share three defining characteristics. First, they have already built a company before, even if it did not result in a major exit. Second, they have demonstrated an ability to execute, fail, pivot and rebuild rather than persist blindly. Third, they display an unusually steep and continuous learning curve, absorbing feedback from customers, employees and investors at speed.

Statistically, founders with these attributes are several times more likely to build a large outcome than first-time founders without prior exposure to failure. This is not because experience guarantees success, but because it materially reduces execution risk. In venture terms, the founder becomes an asset, not just a variable.

This logic applies across ecosystems. In Silicon Valley, where capital is abundant and risk tolerance is high, repeat founders are often funded at the idea stage. In the UK, where capital is more selective, founder quality heavily influences valuation and syndication. In France, where the ecosystem is younger but maturing rapidly, investors increasingly prioritise international exposure and prior entrepreneurial scars as signals of resilience.

2. Why VCs Separate Product Failure from Founder Failure

One of the most misunderstood aspects of venture capital is how investors interpret failure. Not all failures are equal, and sophisticated VCs draw a sharp distinction between a startup failing and a founder failing.

A product can fail for many reasons: poor timing, insufficient demand, technological constraints or a sudden shift in regulation. These outcomes are often impossible to predict with precision. A founder failure, however, is different. It occurs when an individual proves unable or unwilling to learn, adapt and rebuild in the face of evidence.

This distinction explains why investors may continue backing a team after a clear commercial failure. From a portfolio perspective, backing a capable founder through multiple attempts can be more rational than recycling capital prematurely. A product can die. A strong founder can return stronger, armed with better judgement and deeper insight.

This mindset is more prevalent in the US, where failure is often treated as a form of education. The UK has historically been more conservative, though attitudes are shifting. France, traditionally cautious around failure, is now seeing a cultural change driven by repeat entrepreneurs and alumni of scaled startups who are reinvesting both capital and experience into the next generation.

3. Slack: A Case Study in Founder Conviction

A widely cited illustration of founder-first investing is the story behind Slack. Tiny Speck, the company’s original incarnation, raised more than $17 million to build a multiplayer video game called Glitch. The game failed commercially and was eventually shut down. By conventional standards, the investment thesis was broken.

At that point, approximately $5 million of investor capital remained. Many investors would have chosen to recover what they could. Accel did not. Their reasoning was explicit: they had not invested in the game, but in the team.

During the development of Glitch, the founders had built an internal communication tool to help engineers collaborate more efficiently. Accel encouraged the team to abandon the game entirely and explore this internal product as a standalone solution. That tool became Slack, which was later acquired by Salesforce for $27 billion.

This outcome was not the result of superior forecasting. It was the result of conviction in a founder’s ability to recognise failure, extract insight and redeploy talent effectively. The same pattern can be observed in numerous successful companies across the US and increasingly in Europe, though often on a smaller scale.

Conclusion: What This Means for Founders and Investors

For founders, the implication is clear. Investors are not merely evaluating what you are building, but how you think, how you learn and how you respond when reality contradicts your assumptions. Track record matters, but mindset matters more. The ability to evolve is not a soft skill; it is a core investment criterion.

For business angels and VCs, particularly those operating across France, the UK and the US, founder-centric investing offers a framework for navigating uncertainty. Markets will continue to shift, technologies will commoditise and strategies will fail. Founders who can adapt faster than their environment remain the most defensible edge in venture capital.

Ultimately, venture investing is not about predicting the future with certainty. It is about backing individuals who can shape it, even when their first attempt does not survive.