Fund The Founder Or The Prototype, But Not The Idea

When you invest in a company, you’re choosing to back the founder, the idea or the prototype. Or some combination of those. It seems to me that the only reasonable choices are to back the founder or the prototype, but not the idea.Either back the founding team and be very clear about it (eg, like YC funding founders without ideas) or back a prototype with some sort of small but meaningful traction. Anything between those two extremes is unnecessarily adding risk to what is, by definition, already very risky.