Hey there!

It’s Sparsh here!👋 

Pre-seed investors rarely get the luxury of numbers. There is no revenue to model and no cohort to study, only a founder and an idea. 🧠 

David Gan, a pre-seed VC, argues that this job comes down to reading people, and that poker is oddly good practice for it. 🚀 

Here is what that means for you. 🎯

🧩 What the Post Says

• 🎰 Incomplete information. You commit before every card is visible, and waiting for certainty means the price is already gone.

• 🔍 Patterns. One odd answer means little, but the same habit showing up across meetings starts to mean something.

• 🚩 Things that do not add up. Experience builds a feel for when a story and its details point in different directions.

📈 Why Waiting for Data Costs You

🌱 Pre-seed. There is usually no revenue, no retention curve and no customer base to audit. The founder’s judgment, speed and honesty are most of what you can inspect. 🔬

💰 Series A. Evidence exists by now, and so does competition. Crunchbase data shows US companies raised about $42 billion at Series A through October, up roughly 60% year over year, while deal counts stayed steady. Capital rushes in once proof is visible, and that is what an obvious signal costs. 🏁

♠️ Four Poker Habits That Transfer

🕵️ Signals Worth a Second Look

These are our own examples, not a list from the original post. 📝

• 🔄 The story shifts between meetings without a clear reason.

• 🗣️ Customer answers sound confident yet contain no names, numbers or conversations.

• 📉 The metrics shared do not match the scale of the story being told.

• 🤝 References praise the founder but cannot recall a single hard moment.

• 🙈 Tough questions get a smooth answer instead of a direct one.

🪞 The Catch With Gut Feel

Reading people can quietly turn into favoring people who look and sound familiar. 🤔

Picture a founder in a Tier 2 Indian city pitching a US investor over a video call. The accent, the slide style and the pace of speech may differ from what the investor expects, yet none of that says anything about the company. 🌏

Funding conditions make this sharper. Venture funding into Indian startups fell 66% year over year in October to $581 million, according to YourStory Research. With money that tight, each meeting counts for more, and so does a misread. 🔻

Ask every founder the same core questions, so the pattern you notice belongs to them and not to your own preferences. 📏

🚀 What Founders Can Do

• 📣 Stay consistent. Tell the same story in every meeting and change it only when you can explain why. 🪜

• 🧪 Bring proof of conversations. Customer names, quotes or rough call notes give an investor something to check. 🗂️

• 🎤 Answer the hard question first. Directness builds trust faster than polish. 🏗️

• 🌐 Be easy to read across borders. If you are raising from US investors, a short written update and a clear one-page summary leave less room for misreading. 📨

💼 What Investors Can Do

• ⏱️ If the story changes, ask what changed and listen for a reason, not an excuse. 🗒️

• 🔭 If something feels off, note it down and test it in the next conversation. 🧰

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 If you are unsure, speak to people who worked with the founder, not only the references they offer. 📞

• 💡 If your first read is strong, look for what could prove you wrong before you write the check. 🧯

🎬 The Final Hand