Early stage VC relies on gut instinct without data validation.
At the early stages, VCs don’t tend to use any data or technology. Growth stage is mostly a signal and projections problem, basically science at this point. But early stage venture is still very much a craft, flying blind mostly on gut instinct and what people have learned over time without really even having the datasets to figure out if what they’re doing is true or not. VCs are starting to use Claude or ChatGPT but mostly to reproduce whatever they’re doing. It’s a sustaining innovation. They want Claude to evaluate a company like they’ve been evaluating them without asking if they’re even evaluating them right.
— The Hidden Patterns, with Ben Orthlieb · The Keynote on AI