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<h1 style="text-align: center;">VC Mike Hirshlan has some very early seed stage investment advice</h1>
<h2>[WHAT]</h2>
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<li>[SUMMARY] &nbsp;by Connie Loizos @techcrunch.com - Loizos summarizes some of the strategies of Resolute Ventures co founder Mike Hirshland for identifying traits in successful founders of early seed stage investment candidates</li>
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<h2>[WHY]</h2>
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<li>]&nbsp;</li>
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<h2>[WHERE]</h2>
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<li><strong>] READ THE FULL ARTICLE</strong></li>
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<li>]&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/16/vc-mike-hirshland-has-some-very-early-seed-stage-investing-advice/" target="_blank">https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/16/vc-mike-hirshland-has-some-very-early-seed-stage-investing-advice/</a></li>
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<h2>[WHEN]</h2>
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<li>] 2017-02-17</li>
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<h2>[EXAMPLE]</h2>
<p>Mike Hirshland has been a&nbsp;Boston-based investor for 17 years, first with the venture firm&nbsp;<a href="http://www.polarispartners.com/" target="_blank">Polaris Partners&nbsp;</a>and, for the last five years, at the firm he&nbsp;co-founded,&nbsp;<a href="http://resolute.vc/" target="_blank">Resolute Ventures</a>, which has offices in both Boston and San Francisco.</p>
<p>Resolute tends to write checks&nbsp;when there&rsquo;s a founder, an idea, and not much more. Hirschland&rsquo;s strongest ideas are about so-called pre-seed deals and how to hopefully find the most promising among them.</p>
<p>So what&rsquo;s there to know? For starters, he says, early traction is &ldquo;very uncorrelated to success. There are &nbsp;many things that few people like. There are few things that many people like.&rdquo;</p>
<p>investors in hyper young deals also need to &ldquo;be inclined to fall for founders&rsquo; dreams,&rdquo; particularly if the founders fall in to a number of buckets that Hirshland has found to hold the most success.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The ability to build [your own product] is core to success.&rdquo;</p>
<p>A &ldquo;messianic attitude&rdquo; is also key, says Hirshland. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen the most outsize outcomes from people who know from the start what they want to do, versus people who want to start a company and begin by&nbsp;winnowing down a number&nbsp;business ideas.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&nbsp;red flags he watches for, too. Among them: people who want to release a &ldquo;perfect&rdquo; product (he says this is usually toxic); and founders who fall so in love with their own technology that they&rsquo;re blind to the imperatives of building a business (in other words, they confuse validation from a small, early group of users as success and don&rsquo;t pay enough attention when user growth turns sluggish).</p>
<p>Startups that are focused on growth from day one are often doomed, too, in Hirshland&rsquo;s experience. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the kiss of death. You see so many companies focus on growth to attract funding and they raise the capital, &nbsp;but investors are then really investing in an [unhealthy operation] that can&rsquo;t sustain itself.&rdquo;</p>
<p>(Pressed on what&nbsp;is&nbsp;a sustainable rate of growth, Hirshland says it varies from company to company. He notes that &ldquo;20 percent user growth per month is bandied about,&rdquo; but adds that &ldquo;that&rsquo;s much easier to do when you are teensy&rdquo; and very difficult otherwise.)</p>
<p>a relentless compulsion to soak up all the information a founder can about the market in which they are operating. &ldquo;I get most excited about people who are highly experimental, not afraid of rejection, and who are super data driven. I&rsquo;d rather see someone who is willing to disappoint their earliest users in order to get something right.&rdquo;</p>
<h2>[HOW-TO]</h2>
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<h2>[REFERENCE]</h2>
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<li>] SRC = ? twtr ?&nbsp;</li>
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<h1 style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;</h1>

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