The personality venture capitalist look for in founder: An artificial intelligence approach to personality analysis

Abstract: To date, the usual analysis of an entrepreneur personality is primarily a gut feeling of the venture capitalist and is hard to codify. This paper aims to explore in a qualitative way what it is about the characteristics and the personality of the entrepreneur that influences the investment made by the venture capitalists. These findings will then be used to discuss if an artificial intelligence application can be used to analyze the personality of entrepreneurs. The primary source of information for this paper is interviews with venture capitalists. The authors searched for similarities within the available literature on entrepreneurial personalities and found that the majority of the personality traits mentioned by the venture capitalist can be found in the literature.  The research findings suggest that all venture capitalist value an entrepreneur that has passion for what she is doing and has the ability to get the job done. Additionally, most of the venture capitalist interviewed value an entrepreneur that is coachable, flexible, visionary, and is able to communicate that vision well.  Finally, based on the results, the authors proposed a framework for how an artificial intelligence system can be structured to assess personalities of entrepreneurs.