EP02-Truth, Flexibility, and the Real Test of a Founder

When people talk about evaluating founders, they often focus on the surface. The pitch deck. The traction slide. The size of the market. The familiar checklist. I understand why. It feels objective. It feels safe. But it rarely tells you who you are about to partner with.

My work begins long before the first document arrives. The real signal sits in presence, not in data. Presence shows up before words do. A founder’s ability to stay grounded, curious, and open tells me far more about their potential than any chart. This is not magic. It is not guesswork. It is a disciplined way of observing people and systems at the same time.

What I explore in this episode is simple to describe but harder to live: truth, flexibility, and the one conversation that reveals whether we can build a venture together or not.

I will take you through the full arc, from the first meeting to the research phase, and then to the moment that decides everything: how a founder reacts when the truth about their idea comes back to them.

The First Meeting: Presence Before Performance

When I sit down with a founder, I don’t start with the pitch deck. I start with them.
How do they enter the room?  How they sit. How they breathe. How they handle silence. How they ask questions and why they ask them. I take in the general atmosphere rather than the details. My focus softens so I can sense the whole field, not just the individual.

This is my starting point because in the early stages of a venture, nothing is stable. If you observe closely, you can feel how a person holds themselves in uncertainty. That signal matters. Not because I expect them to be polished. I actually prefer when they are not. Authenticity is easier to read than performance. And I can only partner with what is real.

For many years, I thought everyone operated this way. Later, I learned it is not common. People rush to conclusions. They jump to solutions. They try to impress. I sit back and listen. I let the person reveal their rhythm.

In these moments, I believe everything a founder says. Not because I am naive. Because goodwill gives me a clean signal. If I enter the conversation suspiciously, I will find what I expect. If I enter with trust, I can see who they truly are.

This is the beginning of the deep work.

The Shift To Research: When Logic Takes Over

After the first meeting comes the part I enjoy the most. The research. I go deep. I cannot help it. I do it naturally. No one has to push me. I follow threads until I find the structure behind the noise.

The key here is not the depth itself. It is the reason for the depth.
I do not research to poke holes. I research to create context. I want to understand the system the founder is trying to enter. I look for the patterns that will shape their journey. I want to know whether the assumptions they build on are stable or fragile. I treat every idea the same way with full respect and full scrutiny.

Sometimes the thesis is strong but incomplete. Sometimes the story is good, but it is built on weak foundations. Sometimes the idea is brilliant, but surrounded by the wrong narrative.

The goal is not ego. The goal is clarity.

When I finish my research, I build a framework around what I discovered. Not a rigid structure but a living map. When the map feels accurate enough, I go back to the founders.

And this is where things get interesting.

The Most Important Conversation

The meeting after the research is the real test.
Not for their idea but for them.

I sit down with the founders and present my findings. The strong points. The weak points. The blind spots. The inconsistencies. The opportunities they have not seen yet. Everything. Truthfully. Directly. But with care.

This is where most teams fail.
Not because the idea is flawed. Ventures can survive weak ideas. They cannot survive rigid minds.

If a founder hears new insight and immediately collapses into defensiveness, the partnership will break sooner or later. If they treat the narrative as a sacred object, not as a living system, then we cannot build together.

But when a founder listens. When they take a breath, when they challenge me with strength but stay open to the possibility that a better version exists, that is when I know we might have something. This combination is rare: strong opinion with flexibility. Purpose with openness. Drive with a willingness to adapt.

People sometimes think this moment is about business. It is not. It is about character.

Ventures Are Built On Partnership, Not Perfection

Every successful venture is a partnership. You cannot do it alone. You cannot build anything meaningful from a defensive or isolated posture. And the early stage tests the partnership every single day. New decisions. New data. New doubts. New pivots. Everything is moving. Everything is fragile.

If we cannot form a shared narrative, the strain of execution will expose that fracture.
If we can, the venture becomes stronger than the individuals in it.

Building something is not just about tactics. It is about presence. It is about how you show up when shit gets real, how you respond when your idea meets reality for the first time, how you integrate feedback that challenges your identity. This is where trust is built or broken.

In the best cases, the founder leaves our conversation more focused, more grounded, and more in touch with their own purpose. They do not feel corrected. They feel understood. Seen. Refined. Clearer than before. When that happens, I know I have done my job.

Why This Matters To Investors And Founders

If you are an investor, you know that early-stage decisions often rely on instinct. But instinct without method is just a gamble. What I describe here is a disciplined intuitive process. A mix of sensing, logic, research, and human understanding. It is not about predicting the future. It is about assessing the person who will face that future.

If you are a founder, ask yourself this:

• Can I hold my idea loosely enough to let it grow?

• Can I hear the truth even when it hurts?

• Can I form a partnership where narrative is shared, not defended?

• Can I move from ego protection to purpose protection?

These questions matter because your venture will not fail from a lack of intelligence. It will fail from a lack of alignment.

The Real Test

The real test of a founder is not how well they pitch. It is how well they respond when the story they believe meets the system they want to enter. Truth and flexibility decide everything. Without them, you build alone. With them, you build with others. And building with others is the only way anything meaningful ever gets done.

This episode is an invitation.
To look deeper.
To listen without fear.
To treat research as discovery, not a threat.
To build partnerships that can handle pressure.

Because in the end, the strongest ventures are built by people who choose truth over comfort and curiosity over ego.

Timecode:

00:00 Introduction: Deep Dive into Interests

00:51 Evaluating Startups: The Human Element

01:50 The Importance of Due Diligence

02:33 Research and Frameworks

03:59 The Critical Conversation with Founders

04:32 Building Meaningful Partnerships

05:21 Decision-Making and Human Factors

05:58 Conclusion: Achieving Success Beyond Business

Links:

Uniprisma: https://uniprisma.com/

Transcript:

So one way that I operate that really describes the way I'm approaching things that are of interest to me is I like to listen. I like to observe people, patterns, and systems, and I like to go deep. I like to research it. Nobody needs to encourage me to go deeper or to understand it. It comes naturally. I love to do that. It's something I really enjoy, so I do it anyway. And there are so many things that are interesting to me, apart from business as well, that I go deep into.

To give an example of how it works, when I get in touch with a startup, first and foremost, I want to have a solid look and feel about the founders and the founder team who they are, what's the vibe, why are they doing this? Everything that is not on the pitch deck. I don't care about the pitch deck at all, honestly. I just want to meet the person who you are. How do you sit down? How do you ask questions? Why do you ask questions? Are you interested in anything? Truly, even without having the chance to fundraise money. Even without fundraising, you would still be interested.

So I'm just listening. I'm just there. I take it all in. The way I can describe it is that until before due diligence, I believe everything a person says. I'm totally in goodwill. Whatever you say, it must be true, and I believe it. Then comes my due diligence, which is to go and research with my own logic and try to understand whether the assumptions which the thesis are built upon still stand, or are they weak? Can they be fixed, or should we just throw them out or replace them?

Within the research, I enjoy the details of the research, but I'm always thinking in systems and frameworks. Maybe I go very deep into one sub-segment of the topic, but I only do that because I want to understand the system around it better. So I'm creating context to what I heard, and when I feel confident enough that I created a good enough framework, I go back to the founders, and I almost present them with my findings, and I see how they react.

And that is actually where I would say most of the startups would fail. Why? Because and I know it's hard people get so attached to their ideas, and it's so difficult to let it go, or to believe that you could do things in another way, which is maybe more efficient, or better for your clients, or whatever. But I do enjoy when people have strong opinions. I love that, but only if it is combined with flexibility. We challenge each other. The overall goal is to find a better solution.

So when I go back to the founders and discuss with them what I have found throughout my research, I would say it's the most important conversation you can have. It's not about the research; it's about the ability to create a common narrative with partners. Are you flexible enough to modify or fine-tune your narrative, or do you stick to what you have decided? Because eventually, building any kind of venture is about partnerships. You cannot do it on your own. So if it's about partnerships, then the ability to form meaningful partnerships is the core value. So that's what I'm looking for.

And it comes in stages. It's not like you discover right away if the other person is capable of that. There are stages of this discovery, and the next stage is action. So we make plans, and we take action to execute those plans. Throughout that, there are so many decisions to be made, so many iterations and pivots, and these are again, tests of this partnership quality.

But then comes a time when you need to make a bigger decision, which is an investment, looking at it from a VC point of view, or fundraising, onboarding an investor to your company, or merging with another company. These are big decisions, and yes, the legal, the financial, the technical—they all should be strong. But no matter how strong they are, if the human factor doesn't click, then it'll be just a mediocre story or even a failure.

So when I do my job well, then as a result of that, people find their true voice or their best version of how they can do the thing they want to do, how they want to build a startup. But it's not just about techniques and tactics. It's not just about business. It's a wider context, like what your presence should be as a human. And part of it is business, but it's interconnected.

So when I see that somebody is more focused as a person, and thriving, and motivated, and enjoying, and making progress, that's when I know I've done a good job, and that's when I completed my mission.