Dear Dariusz,

- Just to start, creditworthiness is defined as "the extent to which a person or company is considered suitable to receive financial credit, often based on their reliability in paying money back in the past." Well, I think this may not be the best criterion to measure. Successful founders have an unorthodox past one way or another, not structured as other people.

- That definition set aside, in general, startups have several phases (From nothing to Series Seed, Series Seed to Series A, Series A to B, etc. ). Risks lower as Series increases, and "normally", creditworthiness should increase, not always though.

- Based on your question, I guess you might be in search of opinions prior to a Series Seed, when a startup is at "nothing " stage and in highest risks practicable. Statistics says +90% of them fail. In case of innovative startups, failure is +99%. So, it really does not matter what criteria, an investor picks, not to mention investors do not invest in innovative startups unless they have a fund only for innovation for any reason or they gamble on innovation to partially avoid taxes and build reputations.

- Investors are usually interested in the return of investment. I have seen some rare investors, maybe for personal reasons, invest on innovative startups (for instance to cure cancer, discover a drug for particular disease, etc.).

- Since the probability of success is 1%, it is very vague and fuzzy and anyone may fail and otherwise succeed. I have seen 100s of startups, even non-innovative, failed in one way or another. Some before fund raising, some in the middle of Series Seed or A and some after.

- In my opinion, it has a lot to do with founders personalities and passions, especially when in comes to innovation, which is almost impossible to happen! Are they truly committed? Do they know what they are talking about? Are they realist people, while they certainly must be imaginative? Do they work hard? Do they have leadership? Do they understand finance, business, customer, sales, strategy, law, products, technology, and the list goes on? Many other such questions follows after.

- To me, a criterion would are they a truly passionate character(s)? Since the probability of success is low, I would also consider that they are going to fail anyway. Basically, one might consider that a donation to innovation rather than an investment.

In sum, my humble view is that personalities prevail technicalities, when it comes to innovative startups, and I do not recommend investing nor launching an innovative startup. 😀

Thank you for your great discussions! It seems you are very committed to them. You would have probably make a great founder. However, Don't.

Best regards,

J.