Founder Feedback - 2019 - Osborne Saldanha

Osborne Saldanha, a seasoned early-stage investor, emphasizes his commitment to respecting founders' time and providing genuine feedback, even when declining investments. To improve his own process, he's introduced an anonymous feedback form for founders he's interacted with, aiming to enhance the founder-investor relationship and contribute to a healthier startup ecosystem.

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1

Prioritize transparent communication and genuine feedback, even when declining an investment, to foster respectful founder relationships.

2

Actively seek and value founder feedback to continuously improve your evaluation process and operational effectiveness as an investor.

3

Respect founders' time and effort by responding promptly to all communications and being clear about your decision-making process.

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In any given year, I interact with at least a thousand founders most of whom pitch to me. The founders go through a lot of preparation and iterations to perfect that pitch - besides running their business. I don’t want to be an ass to the Founder - or at least I attempt to be courteous to them.

Some conscious efforts I make to respect their time and effort are 1. respond to every single text / call / LinkedIn message / email / tweet etc. (I actually do, especially if it’s not from a reference), 2. be transparent about my evaluation process and where I’m at with it, 3. give genuine feedback when I decline a company. Unfortunately, I’m not competent to advise a founder on how she should run her business.

However, there are times when I drop the ball and I want to reduce frequency of that occurring.

In an attempt to keep improving myself professionally, I’m publishing an annonymous feedback form. If you’re a founder that reached out to me in this year, I request you to fill this up. It will take less than 2 mins of your time but will be invaluable to me in my growth. It’s completely anonymous - I;m not secretly collecting any IP/Location data in the background.

Feel free - be as honest and productive as you can.

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This feedback form is inspired from Hemant Mohapatra’s 360 Feedback Form. Hemant is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, India.