Arielle Zuckerberg abides by what she calls the “rizz and tiz” founder theory.YouTube/Leaders
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What do VCs view for in startup founders?
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For Arielle Zuckerberg at least, it boils down to a balance of what she calls “rizz and tiz.”
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Zuckerberg, a general partner at a VC firm and Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, explained on a podcast.
“Rizz” will open doors for you, especially if you’re a founder, states Arielle Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, a general partner at Long Journey Ventures and a sister of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, recently talked about what her early-stage VC firm views for in founders.
It boils down, she stated, to what she calls “rizz and tiz.”
“This is kind of how we believe about evaluating founders at Long Journey,” she stated on an episode of the podcast “Sourcery” released last week. “In our investment committee meetings, we talk about whether or not this founder has the right balance of rizz and tiz.”
Rizz entered the online lexicon in recent years and is short for charisma.
To Zuckerberg and Long Journey, this means knowing, “Can this person recruit an amazing team, can they attract downstream funding, are they going to be a magnetic leader?” she stated.
As for “tiz,” it appears to be Zuckerberg’s riff on “tism,” an abbreviation for those on the autism spectrum that has itself become internet slang. She spoke about supporting neurodiverse founders at Long Journey.
“We believe that neurodivergence is a superpower, and we view for people that live their lives differently,” she stated. “I believe it also represents an intensity and directness. So we want the balance of both, and we believe it kind of takes both to be an amazing founder.”
Zuckerberg gave some examples of founders her firm has backed who demonstrate rizz and tiz. One founder, she stated, “doesn’t believe in smartphones,” so he applys a flip phone and a disposable camera. Another, she stated, applys “special focus glasses” with slits positioned so he can only see his computer through them.
At the conclude of the day, rizz and tiz is really about “people who are living their lives differently, but those people are also incredibly magnetic,” she stated. These people also “have the boldness to go after a really magically weird idea,” she added.
On its website, Long Journey calls itself “believers in the magically weird.”
“‘Chase the magically weird’ pushes us to do things that take guts, focus on finding outliers, question the status quo, and let our freak flags fly,” the firm states on its values page. “We love unconventional ideas, quirky personalities, bold choices, and things other people describe as ridiculous or stupid.”
“If you’re a weirdo and/or you’re building something crazy, we’d love to chat!” the page states.
Cyan Banister, one of the firm’s cofounders, notified Bloomberg that Long Journey aims to “view for those magically weird people and to find them before it becomes consensus.”
“There’s always a pocket of dreamers and weirdos. You just have to know where to view,” Banister stated.
Long Journey and Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other VCs see merit in Zuckerberg’s theory, too.
“Tiz is autism. Like you required to be a little bit autistic about the topic or area you’re in,” Sam Lessin, a former Facebook VP, recently stated on the podcast “This Week in Startups.”
“Rizz obtains you in the door; Tiz keeps you there,” Morgan Polotan, a partner at Monashee Investment Management, wrote in a post on Threads.
While hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 2021, Elon Musk stated he has Asperger’s, an autism spectrum disorder.
Musk joked in his opening monologue that he’s going to “create a lot of eye contact with the cast” and was well-versed in “running ‘human’ in emulation mode.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
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