Instacart founder reveals why, for him, dirty sneakers are a surprising signal of real “doer” qualities in startup founders.
A quick look at the shoes tells Max Mullen almost everything he needs to know about a founder. The Instacart co-founder and seed investor revealed his best trick for evaluating founders on the “Uncapped with Jack Altman” podcast on Thursday.
Mullen said it was hard to tell who was “the real deal” at the seed stage, and at a certain point he started “looking down.” “If you look at a founder and they’re wearing dirty white sneakers,” he said, “they’re a real doer.”
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He has noticed that the founders who place less importance on their appearance are often the very ones who sleep in the office and work non-stop on their startups. “They don’t have time to buy fancy sneakers,” Mullen said. “You just keep putting on the same pair of sneakers and they get dirty.”
For example, Mullen said he invested in the AI automation platform Gumloop and one of the founders had “such dirty sneakers.” “They were already falling apart,” Mullen said, adding that he bought the founder new shoes.
New shoes from the investor
“My co-founder Rahul doesn’t see the point in buying new shoes or shirts, so Max bought him a new pair,” said Gumloop’s Max Brodeur-Urbas.
“I just realized that this is what the real creators look like,” Mullen told Altman.