I am a VC in India. Here are 5 traits I want to see in new founders.

Our plan is to invest in 120 startups over four years, and we have about 65 so far.

The classic Antler model involves leading a cohort of people who are transitioning from being employees to startup founders. We help them find their co-founders and give shape to their idea.

One thing we do differently in India is we run a cohort for teams as well. We’ve found that there’s a social tendency for people to prefer going into business with people they’ve met since college or work, and we welcome founders who may already have a team or product in mind.

My team and I receive approximately 4,000 to 5,000 applications and select 100 people to join our cohort of individual founders. The program lasts six months and we end up investing in 20-25 people or eight to 10 companies. We give them $250,000 to fund their idea and another $250,000 once they raise additional capital.

I myself founded and ran a company in the 2010s. I have seen two main positive changes in the Indian startup market.

It’s much easier to attract talent than it was 10 years ago. There were many rights and questions from potential employees because working for startups instead of established companies was seen as a risk. Since the pandemic, there has been a shift and people are eager to join startups.

Founders become more mature every year and have a better understanding of what is needed.

They are more frugal because they know capital is tight and thought more about their industry. They don’t get into business because something is hot and instead build for the next five to 10 years. They also assume that their products will need more traction to raise the same amount of money that would have been invested in them before.

Here are five things I look for in startup founders:

Five founding traits

Execution and Strategy: This is their ability to iterate quickly—to jump between ideas, discard things, and quickly come up with something new.

We’re also looking for people who have ideas that match their skill sets. For example, we don’t want to invest in an AI company where none of the founders have solid technology experience. In the early or “zero to one” and “one to 10” stages, founders need to be able to do things on their own.

Grit and tenacity: Either in their personal life or in their professional life.

Customer Obsession: We spend the most time assessing how obsessed a founder is with their customer and problem statement. We want to know if it’s just a flash in the pan or if it’s something they’ve been debating for years. Does the founder really feel the customer’s pain?

We want people who are not just armchair experts, but who have worked with customers and gotten their hands dirty. Someone who has spent their working life giving presentations and in conference rooms may not cut it.

Communication: Another thing we look for is a high level of clarity in thinking and how they communicate. At the end of the day, venture capital is an ongoing fundraising game – you have to always find good talent, as well as keep telling new investors and the media your story.

We try to gauge if the person is confused or if they are clear about what they are doing.

Ambition and scope: The venture capital industry doesn’t work if you want small results. Even if you don’t want to be a unicorn, a startup that’s valued at $1 billion, you still have to think in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars in valuation and prevent hundreds of millions of people using your product.

Plus an X factor

We are not looking for people who score around 80% to 100% on each of these criteria. Instead, we prefer if, for one or two of the five traits, they demonstrate a peak or an X-factor – they immediately stand out as someone who is the world.–class when it comes to execution or communication, for example.

We want people who are terrible at some things but exceptional at others.

Full co-founderements

Most of our participants look for their co-founders after entering the cohort, and we spend a lot of time and attention matching people.

In my experience, India is not a country where teaching communication is heavily emphasized, so we ask each participant 60 questions to understand their values, work styles and personality types. We look for complements and see pairings between someone with technical experience and someone with business acumen. If a third co-founder is needed, they usually come with operational expertise.

A company we recently funded is working on listening to conversations between employees and customers in retail stores to provide retail data to convert more customers. It was the result of someone who worked in retail for years, along with a tech-savvy co-founder.

Are you a founder who moved to India to launch your own startup? Please contact at [email protected]