Ep#15: Why Founders Follow the Crowd — What VCs Look For Instead with Mike MacCombie

In this episode of Startups Decoded, I’m joined by Mike MacCombie, partner at Generous Ventures, a NYC-based VC fund known for investing in founders who build with behavioral design in mind.

We explore how human behavior shapes startup success and dive deep into the subtle forces that guide (and misguide) founder decisions, from social anchoring to pattern recognition, from frameworks that help to those that hold you back.

The big conversations centered around;

• What early-stage VCs really look for in decision-making
• The traps founders fall into by following trends
• Why "easy" paths often lead to dead ends
• How to make better products and hiring calls by understanding behavioral cues
• The difference between one-way vs. two-way doors in startup choices

This episode isn’t about theory, it’s about how psychology meets startup execution and how founders can challenge conventional wisdom to build smarter, faster, and more intentionally.

Mike MacCombie

Mike MacCombie is a behavioral science-driven investor and community builder focused on accelerating startup growth. As a Partner at Generous Ventures, he works closely with early-stage founders to scale their companies, refine business development strategies, and navigate hiring and later-stage fundraising.

With a deep passion for entrepreneurial communities, Mike has mentored at Techstars NYC and Quake Capital, helping emerging leaders sharpen their communication and connection-building skills. A self-proclaimed “community geek,” he specializes in curating opportunities that drive meaningful connections and business impact in the startup ecosystem.

Generous Ventures

Generous Ventures is a $10M pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital fund based in NYC, backing companies across the US and selectively abroad. They invest in founders with lean, iterative mindsets who prioritize distribution leverage as a key element of their company success.

They focus on applied behavioral design principles in the companies they back: building with the grain of human behavior for leverage in adoption at the customer level, distribution at the business level, and more efficient paths to revenue.

SHOW NOTES

Music Credit: "Neptuno" - Phondupe (Album: Onykia)

Chapters

00:00 Foundations of Curiosity and Learning

05:34 Behavioral Science in Startups

11:36 Founder Types and Decision Making

13:06 Navigating Information Overload

15:33 The Rise of Bootstrap Founders

19:36 The Validation of Fundraising

20:09 The Role of External Validation

22:05 Understanding Internal and External Anchoring

25:40 The Dance of Intuition and Data

27:55 Mastering Decision-Making and Fear of Failure

32:05 One-Way vs. Two-Way Decisions

35:52 The Importance of Self-Awareness in Founding

41:08 Building Communities and Networking for Success