One serious way to help mitigate fraud as a VC: Always Talk To The CTO Yes, CTOs can mislead, too But they tend to be worse at it. And often are brutally direct. Every VC talks to the CEO. So few talk to the CTO.

I always talk to the CTO as my second call, for at least an hour I do want mainly to get a sense of how they build software, and how they think about the business But if I’ve seen any flags … I ask them I ask them about the flag, Columbo-style You often learn a lot

I am amazed how many CTOs tell me their VCs never even talked to them before investing I guess if you’ve never built software itself, you might not see point But boy, what a missed opportunity Great CEO, OK CTO, decent outcome But Great CEO, Amazing CTO, can never be stopped

I’ve lost a little money as an investor And I’ve made some investments that had mediocre outcomes But I’ve never had anything buy a Good or Better outcome with the combo of a Great CEO and an Amazing CTO It’s a force multiplier And … a fraud identifier

Still, the reality is we all used to do more diligence Not sure at the earlier stages, we’ll ever do as much as we used to Maybe