Most investors, IMO, are not great evaluators of founders (e.g., are easily fooled by elite credentials) The theory is that if someone doesn't have elite crede

Most investors, IMO, are not great evaluators of founders (e.g., are easily fooled by elite credentials) The theory is that if someone doesn't have elite credentials, he doesn't have the hustle to stitch a business together amid adversity. I'd generally agree that it's much harder to launch a successful business than it is to get into Stanford. The latter is not at all hard if you (or, more accurately, your parents) know how to go about it. Two fallacies are that (1) people who didn't go to Stanford couldn't get in, as if everyone wanted to go there at 17, and (2) that "hustle" at 17 correlates significantly to hustle at 25 or 38. VCs come from a socioeconomic milieu in which it's normal for kids of average intelligence to attend Stanford or Harvard, because of all the connections they can pull, so their assumptions are valid where they live. The mistake they make is that they assume that (no Stanford => not founder material) to be true for the other 99.9% of the population.