We like to believe great ideas are undeniable. That cream rises. Then you sit on the other side of the table.
The point worth examining
I’ve watched good startups get passed over — not because the idea was wrong, but because it was the 31st deck that day and the reviewer was running on fumes. The signal was there. Nobody had the bandwidth to see it.
We tell ourselves evaluation is about the startup. Too often it’s about the state of the person reading it.
What gets missed
Peter Thiel put it well: “The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd.”
“Innovation doesn’t die in the market. It dies in the inbox.”
— ai.STARTUPJURY field note
If that’s true, a lot of what dies in our inboxes wasn’t unfundable. It was unlucky with timing and attention.
The evaluation problem
How many great companies never happened because the right person opened the deck on the wrong day?
Have you ever almost missed something that looked unremarkable on paper?