What Venture capitalists REALLY look for in an early stage startup by a VC-backed founder

Having worked in finance and been backed by Techstars and exited a SAAS business i think i have a little experience with what investors will be looking for when they invest in your business. I have also been in investment banking previous to this.

Its more about the team than anything

Yes this is true. Although the space your building in (like AI) is important i also believe a solid team can continue to pivot to find product market fit with ease.

These are the list of things they also look at:

• The sector
• Validated market
• Validated product (does your MVP have customers?)

Y Combinator. One of the best VC's out there have also confirmed this over and over again.

The deck should be solid and its best if you really can already have had some sort of proof of marketing and traction and even better some paying customers for the business. Its rare a VC will invest pre seed unless you get very lucky.

For VC's its also a luck game. They invest in 100 and 2 businesses to make it big.