BRAVE: How VCs Actually Think About Founders, Unicorns & Growth - E658

Jan 5

"Startup founders have to always make a decision because they either have to persevere or pivot because they are always going through some level of crisis. Persevere means continuing what they are doing, or pivot means changing what they are doing. Founders have to iterate and find the right problem, then finally arrive at the right solution. I was talking to a startup founder and it took him 15 years to generate product-market fit. He built one company, then built another company to service his first company’s problem, and that company ended up being successful. If you look at Slack, it was built by a game developer. They started building their own messaging system, realized the messaging system was a better idea than the game, and Slack was born because they had a problem communicating effectively." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

"We look at Mark Zuckerberg and other founders today and see how amazing they are, and they seem like no-brainers. He is an MIT dropout, and there are incredible stories attached to that. But these are stories told looking back. The tricky part is looking forward. There are 100 MIT dropouts, and most of them are dropping out to build startups, so which one will succeed? There is a gap between who a founder is today and their ability to build a unicorn in the next 10 years. That gap is shaped by time, grit, perseverance, VC support, luck, and macro timing. All of these play a role. The real challenge is choosing one unicorn founder out of 40 top founders who are all scrambling for a VC check." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast
"When a VC meets a startup, the question is whether it will become a unicorn in 10 years. Is there a way for it to double this year, then double again next year, and so on. I recently reviewed a company with a strong founder in the AI space. After consideration, we felt the historical growth rate was not there, and we did not believe it could accelerate fast enough. We decided to say no, even though many friends had already invested or planned to invest. It was a difficult conversation, but we could not see clear differentiation from other AI startups. VCs are ultimately looking for founders who can build a unicorn over the next 10 years." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au breaks down how venture capitalists actually think about startups, founder selection, and long-term value creation. Drawing from real VC decisions, classroom debates, and emerging technologies, he explains why learning speed beats polish, why most “obvious” winners only look obvious in hindsight, and how founders navigate pivots, problem selection, and 10× breakthroughs. The conversation also explores how strange technologies move from science fiction to commercialization, and how VCs evaluate scale, network effects, and unit economics in practice.

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