There's been some interesting research on what characteristics successful founders have (actually, the research was on what successful VCs look for in founders, so maybe the extrapolation is unwarranted, but... research!)

Here's Geoff Smart's Phd thesis (Management Assessment Methods in Venture Capital: Toward a Theory of Human Capital Valuation): http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/methods_in_venture_capita...

And a simpler overview [pdf]: http://www.ghsmart.com/media/press/human_capital.pdf

And, he wrote a book called "Who", but he generalized the research to hiring anybody. Still a good book.

TL;DR: VCs who hire people that have successful experience doing what they plan to do end up getting the best ROI. VCs who hire people based on their gut ("I like the cut of your jib!" keeps popping into my head as I write this) do worst.

The simpler overview is interesting reading.

Completely agree - first question that came to my mind too.

As others alluded to, much of investing is intuition. No one can predict the future, otherwise they'd be billionaires hand over fist. So they use their intuition and available data to get as confident as they can about an investment.

I feel for them - what data do you have on a founder, especially a first timer? Maybe pedigree, relevant experience, or a portfolio of past projects for a hacker, but outside of that, seems to be a fuzzy haze of gut feeling...confident, had "good" answers to questions, etc.

Obviously, this is a subjective question with many answers. However one clear marker is expert sales ability. Anyone involved in business for a while will know that there is a clear demarcation between average sales ability and superstar sales ability. The best sales people are not just a little bit better than the average, but multiple times better. Someone with this skill level can sell anything to anyone, including of course a piece of their company to the VC. The most delicious part is that at that level, this fancy decision tree is irrelevant; it's the sales expert who is selecting the VC, not the other way around.

It's a good question but I think Rob was trying to leave that out of scope and focus on a process that probably fits what other seed/early stage funds have either proactively created or reactively evolved. What's implied is that everything is moot unless they meet founders that they deem investable. Only then, does he spend more time researching the other stuff.