The Unfinished Business Founders
VCs obsess with repeat founders, but there is a great difference between them and we 2048.vc gravitate towards a specific type of a repeat founder - Mission Driven founder working in the Same Space.
We call them the Unfinished Business Founders.
A lot of these founders are in Healthcare or Fintech or many other verticals where deep domain expertise, knowing the customers, knowing the problem, knowing how to sell really matters.
These repeat founders have at least 2x unfair advantage -- Mission + Domain Knowledge.
On the other hand we also see a lot of repeat founders who are clearly chasing trends. Someone who was working in Blockchain space 4 years ago is now working on AI. We call these founders Opportunistic Founders.
While these Opportunistic Founders can be successful they don't have the 2x advantage - they are not typically on a Mission in the same way, and they don’t typically have the expertise in the domain, but instead they are pursuing an Opportunity.
We also see a lot of what we call Revenge Founders -- a founder whose company just failed starting another company right away. Sometimes they start it in a different space, sometimes in the same space. Sometimes they literally start exact same company.
While we love that these founders are convicted around the idea and the space, we think these Revenge Companies are not a good idea.
Founding journeys are exceptionally difficult and if they end in a failure, it makes sense to pause and to reflect before coming right back in.
Regardless, what all Repeat Founders have in common is that they have experience being founders and that’s very valuable. Repeat founders make fewer mistakes in the basics of running the business - legal, hiring, sales, scaling, etc.
At 2048 Ventures we recognize the value of this experience, but we still place a lot more premium on a Mission and Domain expertise -- that’s just how we approach what we do here.
Our favorite founder archetypes are Repeat Founders or First time founders who are obsessed, who are on a Mission and who have Deep Domain expertise in their space.
And for Second time founders it means they are coming back to the space, to the problem they love - they are coming back because they have an Unfinished Business.
