Venture Trailblazers, October 1, 2026. Adeo Ressi in conversation with Charles Hudson, founder of Precursor Ventures.
On October 1, Adeo Ressi sat down with Charles Hudson for Venture Trailblazers, the VC Lab series where investors who built their firms their own way talk through how they actually did it. 1,046 people registered for the session, and we still finished the hour with more than 100 questions left in the Q&A.
Charles has raised five funds and about a quarter of a billion dollars at Precursor Ventures. He has never let a single fund get above $100 million, he runs the firm with no investment committee, and he writes the first check into 80 to 100 companies per fund, usually before there is a product to look at. Over the hour he and Adeo covered how he named the firm, how he sizes funds, how he decides, what he looks for in a founder when there is no data, what the Cursor round did to pre-seed pricing, and what 1999 taught him about this AI cycle.
Watch the full conversation here: Charles Hudson on Venture Trailblazers, the complete session.
This piece is about the founder question. Charles writes first checks before there is traction and often before there is a product, so most of what he is buying is the person. Here is how he reads one.
The short version
- The old behavioral tells have been contaminated. Founders know they are being scored on responsiveness, so they are responsive during the window.
- He looks at history instead, specifically whether someone has ever stepped off the golden path.
- A spotless elite resume makes him nervous, not confident.
- Domain expertise splits his portfolio down the middle. Half of his best companies had it and half did not.
- Most of his companies are post-idea and pre-traction. Checks run $250,000 to $500,000, sometimes $750,000.
Why the usual signals stopped working
Charles used to read grit the way most early stage investors do, by watching how someone behaves during the process. That stopped being informative.
"Many of the things that used to be secret evaluations are now public. Smart founders are like, well, if I’m being evaluated on my email responsiveness during the fundraising process, I’m going to make sure that I’m hyper-responsive, even if I’m not normally hyper-responsive."
He made the point about his own evaluation window specifically. There are all these things people are measuring, and founders have read the same blog posts you have. Any signal that can be performed for six weeks will be performed for six weeks.
So he moved the question back in time. Instead of asking how this person is behaving now, he asks what this person has already chosen to do when nobody was evaluating them.
Off the golden path
"Most of the successful founders in our portfolio have done something risky or gotten off the golden path. People who drop out of PhD programs. You’ve spent a lot of your life learning one thing on one path, and dropping out is hard. People who’ve quit big jobs to do risky things. People who’ve moved to other countries."
What those have in common is not risk appetite in the abstract. It is a documented instance of someone giving up accumulated status in exchange for an uncertain outcome, and then living with the consequences. That is the exact transaction a founder makes every quarter.
It also does not have to be professional. Charles was explicit about that.
"If I haven’t seen the person put themselves into a position where they weren’t an expert, or where they were taking some kind of risk, I always worry, do you know what you’re actually signing up for?"
The resume that worries him
This is the part that lands badly with a certain kind of candidate, and he said it anyway.
"I’ve met a lot of people who went to an elite education, worked at two or three elite companies, and then want to start a startup. Well, this is the first time you’ve ever done something that isn’t formulaic. And many of those people quickly learn this is very different than working at McKinsey."
He was careful to say he does not mean it as an insult, and the logic is not snobbery in reverse. A career spent inside institutions that select, train and promote you is a career in which the next step was always defined by someone else. Starting a company is the first time the path has to be invented, and there is no evidence in that resume about how the person behaves when it is.
Domain expertise cuts both ways
Charles has the portfolio to check this one empirically, and the answer is a dead split. Half of Precursor’s best companies were started by founders with deep domain expertise. Half were started by founders with none.
"Sometimes domain expertise is an advantage because it gives you a head start. But sometimes a lack of domain experience is an advantage because it gives you the freedom to envision things working without all the constraints and knowledge of how they work today. The more disruptive the idea, oftentimes the more baggage you have with previous experience in the category, because you’ve internalized the constraints of the way the world works today."
The practical version for a manager building a thesis:
- Incremental idea inside a complex system? Domain expertise is close to required. Healthcare billing, defense procurement, insurance. You cannot learn the constraints fast enough to survive.
- Genuinely disruptive idea? Expertise can be a liability, because the expert has internalized why the current approach is the only one that works.
- Either way, do not use it as a filter. Charles does not, and he has a hundred companies per fund of evidence that it does not sort winners from losers on its own.
What he needs to see to write a check
Most Precursor companies are post-idea and pre-traction. There is no requirement for a live product.
"Really what I understand is, why you, why this idea, why now. Do I think you’re going to win?"
And then the bar, which he stated as a hard one: "In order to say yes, I have to have a vision of how the company becomes worth at least a billion dollars."
Those two sentences do a lot of work together. The first is about the founder and the moment. The second is about whether the market can get large enough that his ownership math works. A great founder on a $100 million idea does not clear the bar, and he will tell you that rather than stringing you along.
On vibe coded demos
A prototype helps, because it shows him how a founder thinks. But he knows exactly where the line is, and he was funny about it.
"That’s a prototype, but you don’t have auth, you couldn’t actually put this on the internet and let people use it, because it would fall over."
A flat content site built in Replit or Lovable is fine, show him. Anything load-bearing and he knows the difference between a demo and a product, so do not present one as the other. The demo is evidence of taste and clarity, not of engineering.
How to apply this if you are the one writing checks
- Stop scoring process behavior. Responsiveness, deck polish and follow-up speed are all performable. Treat them as table stakes, not signal.
- Ask for one decision they made that cost them something. Then ask what it cost, and what they would do again.
- Look for the discontinuity in the resume. The place where the obvious next step was not the step they took.
- Weigh domain expertise against how disruptive the idea is, instead of treating it as a universal plus.
- Write down your own bar. Charles can state his in one sentence. If you cannot, you do not have one.
Frequently asked questions
What does Charles Hudson look for in a founder? Evidence that the person has previously taken real risk or stepped off a conventional path, plus a clear answer to why you, why this, why now.
Does Precursor require a product or traction? No. Most companies are post-idea and pre-traction, often with no live product.
How big is a Precursor first check? Typically $250,000 to $500,000, with some at $750,000 for companies raising larger rounds.
Does Charles prefer founders with domain expertise? He is split. Half of his best companies had deep expertise and half had none, so he weighs it against how disruptive the idea is.
Reading founders before you have the pattern
Charles is drawing on hundreds of first checks. A manager making their tenth investment does not have that, and no framework substitutes for reps.
Two things shorten the gap. One is volume of exposure, which is why he meets so many people on purpose. The other is borrowed pattern, which is what a room of other managers actually gives you. 1,003 funds have launched through VC Lab, and the thing managers tell us matters most is rarely the curriculum. It is the other people doing the same work at the same time, comparing notes on founders they both met. Venture Institute is the starting point if you are learning the craft before you raise.
Watch the full session
Everything above comes from the hour Charles spent with Adeo on October 1. You can watch the complete conversation here, and the rest of the Venture Trailblazers series is on the VC Lab YouTube channel.
Want the whole session in one place? Charles Hudson’s advice for emerging fund managers is the full recap, with a timestamped index of every topic.
Launch your own fund with VC Lab
VC Lab is a free program that takes you from a thesis to a deployed Fund I, with the legal, LP and operating work handled alongside you. The managers who come through it are the people asking Charles questions like these in the first place.
Apply to VC Lab, or start at govclab.com.