Working backwards, exceptional outcomes tend to come from exceptional founders and often you see that exceptionalism in their professional or academic accomplishments. Sometimes this is evident from meeting the founders, and often their academic or professional is not sufficient but VCs simply have no interest in backing mediocre founders because the founding team is part of your moat. Since this has basically become a rule in the market VCs take on great financial risk by ignoring this. Lot’s of teams are simply not investable. It may be harsh, but the outcome distribution is so skewed toward failure and the magnitude of the home runs that this is the only sensible strategy for someone who wants to stay in business as a VC.