If you talk to enough investors, you’ll hear a lot of buzzwords: traction, market size, timing, differentiation.
But Kelly Perdew, co-founder and managing general partner at Moonshots Capital, will tell you none of those matter if a founder can’t lead.
Before raising his first fund, Kelly analyzed data from more than 70 startups. He wanted to know what actually predicted success.
Was it the size of the market? The product category? The team’s technical background?
Nope.
The variable that showed up every single time was extraordinary leadership.
What Investors Really Mean by “Extraordinary Leadership”
When investors say they back great founders, they’re not talking about charisma or hype.
They’re talking about a pattern of execution under uncertainty.
Kelly defines leadership through five repeatable behaviors:
Resilience: You’ve failed, and you came back sharper.
Coachability: You listen, filter, and act on advice quickly.
Accountability: You own results, even when things break.
Team Signal: People choose to follow you again and again.
Mission Clarity: You can explain why you’re building this in one sentence.
These traits matter more than metrics because they determine how you’ll respond when everything else changes and it will.
As Kelly puts it:
“Ideas evolve. Markets shift. But leadership — how you make decisions, how you treat people, how you respond to setbacks — that’s the constant variable investors bet on.”
Why Investors Measure You Before They Fund You
Founders often assume investors start evaluating at the pitch deck.
In reality, the evaluation starts weeks earlier.
They’re watching:
How fast you reply to emails.
How clearly you summarize progress.
How you handle feedback or a ‘no.’
Every small interaction gives an investor data on how you’ll handle larger challenges after they invest.
That’s why leadership isn’t a soft skill, it’s a due-diligence category.
In Moonshots Capital’s model, extraordinary leadership is worth more than product or market. A founder with clear vision and follow through can pivot their way into traction. A technically perfect team without leadership can lose it all in one market shift.