Our practices for conducting founder interviews have shifted meaningfully, and the specific changes are worth naming.
We started moving past the pitch more deliberately
Early founder interviews sometimes spent more time than necessary on polished elevator-pitch material. We now try to acknowledge the pitch briefly and direct most of the conversation toward specific operational detail.
We tightened our selection criteria beyond PR access
We've become more deliberate about prioritizing founders with a genuinely distinctive story over founders whose primary qualification is effective outreach from investors or communications teams.
We started re-interviewing founders after meaningful time has passed
We didn't consistently follow up with founders we'd interviewed previously to see how their account of their company evolved. We now try to do this more deliberately, particularly after a company has faced real difficulty.
Why this evolution matters
We think founder interviews are most valuable when they surface specific, genuine detail rather than polished narrative, and we've made real process changes to push more consistently in that direction.