When a partner decides to recommend a startup to the investment committee, he needs some explicit reasons to convince the committee, not some kind of implicit vibe

But given the amount of astroturfing and star-buying out there, relying on star counts may well select for deceptive founders.

Yes, I think VCs have already switched to using other metrics that are less easy to fake, such as download per month or customer interviews (or more direct, ARR, even for really early stage startups). I just want to explain the background reason of it.