My impression from YC and investors in general is that without a product and traction, the investment decision becomes mostly about you as a person. Do you have

My impression from YC and investors in general is that without a product and traction, the investment decision becomes mostly about you as a person. Do you have an impressive résumé? Are you an MIT/Stanford grad? Do you come across as especially intelligent and ambitious in conversations? When you have a product and traction, a lot of that goes out the window. All the things I listed above are basically proxies for “might have the ability to make something people want”. If you’ve already shown you can do that, other things become less important. On the extreme end, where you are growing like crazy, most investors will overlook just about any flaw or lack of credentials.