If you're brilliant and idiosyncratic and delivering something truly compelling, then vcs are more than happy to look past these things. God knows how many very eccentric founders have received funding
That is a ridiculous claim belied by the distribution of positive outcomes in VC. Any VC making this claim with any confidence is immediately dismissible IMO. I would literally never speak to that person again.
Like in all fields, true competence comes with a deep skepticism of one’s own capabilities. Especially in a field absolutely chock full of luck, uncontrollable variables, motivated reasoning, and outright deception.
I would say that if an investor was intending to partner with someone who was uniquely advanced intellectually, it would be from spending enough time directly with the potential partner to be able to well recognize the upper echelon like it could not be accomplished any other way.
The most competent at this would sensibly not be relying very much on slides at all, and capable of clearly seeing beyond the factors like luck and uncontrollable elements.
It couldn't happen overnight, and especially not in a single slideshow, much less an email.
What happens when a founder is open to investment and only a super-genius capitalist would be appropriate?
The relevance of a slideshow might still mainly be in the "signaling" more than anything else.
As we have seen, you can be very stable at ones utmost intellectual level year after year, and sometimes it can amazingly be someone who is naturally the complete opposite of advanced anyway.
That usually happens once you already gain traction.
Getting the critical capital to get there is big problem, and I recall some places explicitly snubbing VCs after having to get to "impressive" without them.
