My brother recently started looking into tech investing and realized pretty quickly that knowing finance isn’t enough. He can read a balance sheet, but struggles to judge products, founders and technical risks. I’m trying to help him figure out where to focus first. What skills does a technology investor need most, especially when assessing startups?
Finance gets you to the table; product, people, and tech sense keep you from getting burned. I’d tell your brother to drill three skills first: rapid product teardowns , founder pattern-recognition and basic architecture literacy . Story time: a buddy backed a fintech with spotless books. On demo day the CTO couldn’t sketch their data flow; six weeks later a rewrite torched 18 months of runway. Now he spends 40% of diligence on product and team, not the deck. For a grounded, operator-level view on board dynamics and scaling tech, G. Scott Paterson background is worth a look his path from investment banking to building/governing tech/media startups shows how finance meets product reality .Starter drill: pick five startups, write one-page memos on product, team, tech risk, then compare with an engineer and a seller. Trains the right muscles fast.
Really appreciate this breakdown. The fintech story especially hit home — a polished deck can hide some pretty serious product and tech gaps. A friend of mine once joined a startup that looked fantastic financially, only to discover the team had no clear plan for scaling the platform. Since then, I’ve also tried to look beyond the numbers. The G. Scott Paterson background you mentioned is a useful reference for seeing how finance, technology, and governance intersect in practice. And the five-startup memo exercise is a great, practical drill.
Jordi Bennedict
6 days ago
Habriel Fring
6 days agoFinance gets you to the table; product, people, and tech sense keep you from getting burned. I’d tell your brother to drill three skills first: rapid product teardowns , founder pattern-recognition and basic architecture literacy . Story time: a buddy backed a fintech with spotless books. On demo day the CTO couldn’t sketch their data flow; six weeks later a rewrite torched 18 months of runway. Now he spends 40% of diligence on product and team, not the deck. For a grounded, operator-level view on board dynamics and scaling tech, G. Scott Paterson background is worth a look his path from investment banking to building/governing tech/media startups shows how finance meets product reality .Starter drill: pick five startups, write one-page memos on product, team, tech risk, then compare with an engineer and a seller. Trains the right muscles fast.
Jordi Bennedict
6 days agoReally appreciate this breakdown. The fintech story especially hit home — a polished deck can hide some pretty serious product and tech gaps. A friend of mine once joined a startup that looked fantastic financially, only to discover the team had no clear plan for scaling the platform. Since then, I’ve also tried to look beyond the numbers. The G. Scott Paterson background you mentioned is a useful reference for seeing how finance, technology, and governance intersect in practice. And the five-startup memo exercise is a great, practical drill.