The whole VC pitch process is basically a test that VCs run to detect future success. Obviously, it's badly prone to false negatives and false positives. So I

The whole VC pitch process is basically a test that VCs run to detect future success. Obviously, it's badly prone to false negatives and false positives. So I think the thesis of the article is that checklists help VCs reduce both those error rates. I don't think, however, that Gawande's necessarily saying that checklists improve a VC's winner detection algorithm; just that checklists help the VC make sure to run the algorithm thoroughly.