Involving oneself at all levels of the company is by no means at odds with avoiding micromanagement. Likewise, neither is empowering people in your company with degrees of creative freedom that are aligned with the vision.
SV dogma dictates selecting for hustle, which is merely one trait in the equation. There's a lot of people out there with great hustle, executing on visions that aren't worth a damn. Some of these people then land large funding rounds and find themselves unsure of what to do, and end up succumbing to VC pressure to do something stupid that's wholly incongruent with their business (as opposed to the stupid things which are wholly congruent). For example, hiring bloodsucking C-suite and V-suite types.
Here's how I'd select if I ran an accelerator, in no particular order:
- Minimum 5 years working on the project already, ideally a decade
- Founder has decided it's what they want to do with their life
- Has a list of the first 100+ people they're going to hire picked out, with detailed explanations of who these people are and why they make sense
- Has a plan to sell each independently wealthy person on that list on why they'll be happy working the project when money isn't their primary concern
- Has a plan to sell investors who hopefully aren't VCs (because most suck)
- Has otherwise found VCs that don't suck
- Solid character; kind human being with principles
- Decent hustle acceptable; high perseverance required
Suffice it to say someone fitting these criteria probably wouldn't even get that precious 10-minute YC interview. Neither would most of the so-called eccentric folks out there. They'd be deemed failures. Or crazy. Especially the solo founders.
Speaking of dogma, there's a lot of emphasis placed on both coming up with business ideas and then externally validating those. Any founder that has a legitimate, deep-seated vision will find those concepts offensive. After all, Jobs is famous for the following quote:
'Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.'
I omitted the rest, which was an apocryphal misquote of Henry Ford. Of course, Jobs was also needlessly ruthless and cruel. However, despite being an asshole, he was at least a world-class vision guy.
