In this thread, there seem to be two situations: (1) A VC (venture capital investor) evaluating the founder of a startup and (2) a manager hiring a subordinate.

In this thread, there seem to be two situations: (1) A VC (venture capital investor) evaluating the founder of a startup and (2) a manager hiring a subordinate. For (1) the VC, my summary view is that the VC criteria, what VCs pay attention to, is growth in traction -- they want the graph of traction over time to be "up and to the right". For more, they look at the size of the market. For one more, maybe consider if there is a "Buffett moat", that is, a barrier to entry for would be serious competitors. Maybe they look if the startup is in a field, space, they are interested in. Finally, if all these look good, they look to see if anything is seriously wrong. At times I have suspected that some VCs write essays on their investment criteria that, really, are intended broadly to get attention, have their name better known, and in particular to get applications from founders, that is, "deal flow". Then I would insert into this thread that, once a startup looks good in the above criteria, "energy" will not receive serious evaluation. Or, the above criteria are the real ones and will NOT be ignored or overruled, and if a startup has done well on those then other criteria, e.g., "energy", must be close to irrelevant. Or, if a startup looks good on the above criteria, then passing up the opportunity for a unicorn for relatively subtle reasons will be regarded, by the VCs partners, as foolish. For (2) the manager, I would hope that he (or her, here and elsewhere) has a situation, that is, some work to be done, has that work fairly well defined, regards currently his team as too busy to do that work, so wants to hire. In that, the main criteria should be, can the candidate do the work the manager has in mind? I would insert into this thread: That situation should be rather clear and definite and not subtle or complicated.