What I´ve Learned to Trust Before the Spreadsheet.
This piece is shaped by years of working with founders, and by a simple belief: standards outlast speed.
As mention a bunch of times before, I’ve sat through a lot of pitches.
Some were polished.
Some were raw.
Some had impressive numbers.
Some had almost none.
What surprised me over time is how rarely the spreadsheet is what makes me lean forward.
More often, it’s something quieter.
How the founder builds.
Where This Really Clicked for Me
I recently read Hel Ved.
On the surface, it’s a book about chopping, stacking, drying, and preparing firewood.
But as most Norwegians know, it’s not really about wood.
It’s about doing things properly.
About taking responsibility for winter before winter arrives.
About caring for something even when no one is watching.
Around the same time, I revisited The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.
Naval talks a lot about leverage, but not the kind most founders obsess over.
Not speed. Not hustle. Not volume.
He talks about judgment.
Long-term thinking.
Building things that compound quietly.
That combination hit me because it put words to something I’ve experienced repeatedly but never fully articulated.
Productize Yourself.
What I’ve Seen Up Close
I’ve worked with founders who focused on protecting the idea before they were clear on what they were actually building.
And I’ve worked with founders who had almost none of that, yet built with such care that people trusted them instinctively.
The difference wasn’t intelligence.
It wasn’t ambition.
It wasn’t even experience.
It was standards.
The founders who cared deeply about the craft, about getting the small things right, made better decisions under pressure. They asked better questions. They moved slower when it mattered, and faster when it was safe.
I didn’t need a model to feel it.
I could feel it in the room.
Culture Isn’t Soft When You’re Living It
People often talk about culture as something you define later.
In my experience, culture shows up immediately.
It shows up in:
- how a founder explains their business when they don’t yet have all the answers
- how they handle uncertainty
- how they talk about risk versus responsibility
- how they protect the early version of the idea
- how they define “good enough”
- how they behave when no one is pushing them yet
Every founder carries a story about what they’re building, a romanticized version of how it should feel, how people should work together, what kind of company it should become.
I’ve learned not to dismiss that story.
Because that story shapes judgment.
And judgment shapes everything else.
Why I Believe the Founder Is Often the First Moat
When people talk about defensibility, they usually point outward:
- IP
- patents
- data
- regulation
- network effects
Those matter. I’m not dismissing them.
But in the early stages, the first real moat I’ve seen is internal.
It’s the founder’s craft.
Their pride in the work.
Their refusal to cut corners when it would be easy to do so.
More often than not, the strongest protection isn’t legal.
It’s personal.
What This Means for Safety
As an investor, I’m not just looking for upside.
I’m looking for resilience.
Early on, safety doesn’t come from numbers.
It comes from identity.
When a founder has an inner standard, when they genuinely care about building something properly, things feel less fragile.
Decisions are cleaner.
The story stays coherent.
Shortcuts get resisted.
Trust forms faster.
Naval talks about peace of mind as a form of wealth.
I recognize the same thing in founders who build with care.
Their companies feel calmer under pressure. It may not always feel that way on the inside, but from the outside it reads as resilience.
Why Standards Outlast Speed
Markets move fast now.
Ideas spread instantly.
First-mover advantages shrink quickly.
What doesn’t shrink as fast is craft.
Competitors can copy features.
They can copy pricing.
They can copy positioning.
They can’t copy judgment.
And judgment is shaped long before traction, in how someone builds when it doesn’t matter yet.
What I’ve Learned to Trust
After years of being around founders and investors, one thing keeps proving true to me:
People back people.
But the people I trust most are the ones who do things properly.
Not loudly.
Not performatively.
But consistently.
There’s nothing naive about the romantic story a founder carries.
It’s not fluff.
It’s not branding.
It’s preparation.
It’s judgment.
It’s quiet leverage.
And more often than not, it’s the first real sign of defensibility.
If this resonates, you know where to find me.
