Keep hearing conflicting takes - some say PMs spot operational risks better than bankers, others claim VCs only care about market size and team. From those who made the jump, how often does product evaluation actually influence investment decisions at seed stage?
2024 PitchBook data shows 38% of seed-stage deals now include PM-style technical due diligence vs 12% in 2019. However, this primarily applies to complex tech (AI infra, devtools). Consumer apps still prioritize growth metrics over product depth.
Sat in on a partner meeting where I caught a scaling issue the engineers missed - storage costs would’ve bankrupt them at 100k users. Fund passed, and that analysis became my ‘technical DD’ case study. It’s about risk hunting, not features.
lol no. unless you’re at a16z trying to outnerd founders, most partners just check if the team went to stanford and if TAM slides go up and to the right. product deep dives are theatre for LPs