What is your secret?

I like to ask founders a simple question: what is your secret?

I still want to learn about the team, market, traction – these still matter. But asking "what is your secret?" during a conversation helps me go a click deeper on a founder and their potential unique insights. I want to see how someone thinks when the script runs out.

At the earliest stages, investing often feels like handicapping a race. You might meet five founders building in a similar space, all qualified, all sharp, all with a credible plan. So how do you begin to differentiate?

That's where the secret comes in.

What I'm really asking is: what do you know that no one else knows? What have you seen in this market, this problem, this moment in time, that gives you a genuine unlock?

Secrets come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it's deep domain experience – a founder who spent a decade inside the industry they're now disrupting and can see the fault lines no outsider would notice. Sometimes it's a business model insight – the realization that you can give away what everyone else charges for and win on a completely different axis. Sometimes it's pure execution – a founder who has done this exact thing before and knows they can move faster than the field.

The specific answer matters, but it's not the only thing I'm listening for. I'm also paying attention to how a founder frames it. The best answers aren't rehearsed. They come from conviction built through experience, from pattern recognition earned the hard way. When a founder lights up answering this question – when they start talking faster because they genuinely can't believe no one else sees what they see – that tells me something. That's founder-market fit showing up in real time.

This one question often tells me more than twenty minutes of standard Q&A. It reveals how a founder sees the competitive landscape, what motivates them, and whether they have the kind of drive that sustains a company through the long middle chapters of building.

So if you're a founder getting ready to pitch, my advice is simple: have your answer. Not a polished soundbite – a real one. Know what you know that others don't. At the end of the day, ideas are a commodity – it's about execution. Your secret is what tells me you understand that, and that you're the one who can actually pull it off.

So when someone asks, don't hedge. Tell them.