Very good post, Martin.<p>My co-founder and I recently made a decision regarding a partnering with another company in a somewhat new field. We made our decision pretty quickly, and it wasn't until I was later asked why we made the decision we did that I went back and considered what had really led us down the path we took:<p>A mentor who works at a big hosting company talked about the way they go about choosing open source technology is not by looking at what the best technology at the time is, but at the quality of the community contributing to that technology, and make a bet that that one will "get better faster" than the others. Without thinking about it, that was the primary criteria that led us to make our decision: the company we chose isn't currently the best at what they do (which is why I had to give this some thought when queried about the decision), but they seem to have set up some systems that (we believe) will let them "get better faster" than their competitors.<p>It wasn't something we considered at the time of making the decision, but in hindsight, that anecdote was the "vector" that gave us the reasoning that probably contributed the most the decision, without us really being conscious of it.<p>Edit: Thinking more about this more now, these incredibly well-built-up and well-tested transfer functions that experienced entrepreneurs and investors have built up is what makes YC and other mentor programs so incredible. This is how Ron Conway and Jessica Livingson judge entrepreneurs so well from just a simple conversation.<p>It's nothing that can be taught, but through books like Founders at Work, or simply sitting and listening to an entrepreneur tell their story, and recall the tough decisions they made early on, one can probably build up pieces of this transfer function. It's what makes Mixergy interviews valuable: there's not a much traditional educational value to them, but just hearing the story of what decisions were made, when, and why, helps build these functions for the viewer.