How do investors evaluate a startup, and how can a team score itself first?

How do investors evaluate a startup?

The survey with numbers is How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions? by Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev, an NBER working paper from 2016. It asked 885 institutional venture capitalists at 681 firms which factors drive their selection decisions, then which one ranks first.

The management team was named as important by 95% of the firms and as the top factor by 47%. Business model was named by 83%, product by 74%, market by 68% and industry by 31%. Business-⁠related factors as a group were rated the top factor by 37%. The paper says the team is more likely to be the top factor for early-⁠stage investors than for late-⁠stage ones.

The survey is old, so we also read a firm's own page. CRV's How Investors Evaluate Teams, dated 30 July 2026, says that at seed stage and Series A "the team is the primary gate", and that once a company clears it, market size and product differentiation drive more of the valuation. That is one firm's view, written to attract founders, not a survey.

What do the four areas cover?

The table sets each area next to what the TBHM assessment asks about it. The right-⁠hand column is our reading of the dimension descriptions on our own pages. The survey did not use our dimensions, and the two do not line up one to one.

Scalability & Fund Raising also covers the round, the cap table, milestones and runway. It carries a third of the 414 points, more than any other dimension.

What does "the team" mean to an investor?

CRV's page lists what its investors test: whether the founder is the right person for the problem, how fast decisions become shipped product, whether the founder can take input without losing conviction, and how steady the founder stays under pressure.

It also lists structure. Between them the founders can build the product and sell it, roles and decision rights are clear, and the co-⁠founders are aligned. Among its red flags are unclear or overlapping roles, an inability to name your own gaps, and, in its words, "inconsistent stories between founders".

The page adds that investors rarely take a self-⁠assessment at face value. They build their own picture in the first meeting and check it through reference calls and backchannel conversations.

How can a team score itself first?

CRV lists the proof a team can bring: evidence of shipping and early traction, honest gaps with a hiring plan, and alignment with a clean cap table. A team can check each against its own records before a first meeting.

The Brutally Honest Startup Assessment is one way to put a number on the four areas. It has 144 questions, takes about 90 minutes per co-founder, and scores 414 points in four dimensions. Each co-founder answers alone, and a co-founder cannot see another's answers until both have submitted. The price is 950 EUR per team, VAT included, with a 60-minute mentorship session (assessment page).

Because every co-⁠founder answers separately, the report shows where the team disagrees. That matters here: CRV names inconsistent founder stories as a warning sign, and a team can see its own inconsistency before an investor does.

What does a self-⁠score leave out?

• It does not predict funding. Our page on a good score and fundraising says so in its first line.
• The answers are the founders' own and have not been checked against documents. Investors check theirs.
• The survey is from 2016 and asked venture capitalists in general. Angels, corporate investors and programmes may weigh the areas differently, and the sources here do not say how.

Our pages on the four dimensions and how the score works give the detail of each dimension and band.