Nine out of ten startups crash and burn. That’s the brutal reality: 90% of all startups fail, investors assessing high-stakes bets in Artificial Intelligence and the next generation of fintech products awake at night. While everyone talks about the big wins and flashy funding rounds, the real battle happens in the boring stuff: the spreadsheets, the phone calls, the late nights digging through financial statements to figure out which companies are actually worth betting on.
The numbers don’t lie. Harvard Business School found that 75% of venture-backed companies never return cash to investors. Three out of four companies that get professional funding end up returning nothing. Even worse, 30 to 40 percent of those companies liquidate completely, meaning investors lose every penny they put in. This is why smart money has gotten obsessed with doing homework before writing checks.
Anuj Maheshwari lives in this world every day as an Associate at a venture capital firm that manages over $500 million. His job was simple but brutal: figure out which startups would make money and which would burn through cash. Working at one of the biggest venture capital firms in Miami and Florida, he built his system for separating the real deals from the expensive mistakes.
Building his playbook for picking winners
Most venture capitalists used to rely on gut feelings and first impressions. He saw this wasn’t working anymore. He built his process that pulled information from everywhere: market data, competitor analysis, financial records, and customer feedback. Everything went into his evaluation machine.
He started every potential investment with deep business analysis. Not just looking at how much money a company made last month, but understanding what made them tick. He researched their markets, mapped out their competition, and figured out what could kill their business next year. Then he built financial models that tested different scenarios, like if sales drop 20 percent, a big competitor enters the market, or their main customer walks away.
“You either do your homework or you lose money,” Anuj Maheshwari says. “We had to build systems that spotted problems before they happened and found companies that had a shot at making it big.”
Every company had to prove how they made money and why their pricing made sense. He wanted to know if they could grow without falling apart. Like, can they handle ten times more customers, or can they compete against companies with bigger budgets? His financial models stress-tested every assumption and showed exactly what could go right or wrong.
Turning research into real decisions
Doing research is one thing. Getting people to act on it is another. He had to take all his analysis and turn it into investment memos that actually convinced the Investment Committee to say yes or no. These weren’t academic papers; they were battle plans that explained why a company was worth millions of dollars or why it would fail.
Each memo had to tell the whole story. How much money they could make, how much they could lose, and what to do about both. Committee members needed enough info to understand what they were betting on, but not so much that their eyes glazed over.
The work never stopped after the initial investment. He tracked key performance indicators across every portfolio company. Revenue growth, customer acquisition costs, burn rates, and market share, he watched it all. When numbers started moving in the wrong direction, he caught it early and flagged potential problems before they became disasters.
His job was to be the bridge between deal flow and the Chief Investment Officer, who made final decisions. Every investment recommendation that reached the top had already been through his analysis machine. This meant decisions were based on data and research, not hunches and handshakes.
Making real money through better research
Good research translates directly into better returns. His systematic approach helped protect and grow the firm’s portfolio during a time when venture capital was under fire for poor performance. His work contributed to a bigger shift in the industry toward data-driven investing.
Venture capital used to be all about relationships and gut feelings about founders. That’s changing fast. Better data and analysis tools mean investors can make smarter decisions based on evidence rather than intuition. The firms that figured this out first are eating everyone else’s lunch.
“We weren’t trying to avoid all risk, that’s impossible,” Anuj Maheshwari says. “We just wanted to know exactly what we were getting into so we could pick the risks that might pay off.”
His portfolio monitoring system created value long after the initial investment. By watching how all their portfolio companies performed, he started seeing patterns in which ones made money and which ones didn’t. He used what he learned from past investments to make better picks the next time around.
Changing how the industry works
The venture capital world is getting more competitive and complex every year. The old ways of picking investments don’t work anymore. His approach represents where the industry is heading, combining systematic analysis with experienced judgment to make better bets.
Recent data shows venture capital deal values jumped $47 billion in 2024, even though fewer deals got done. Investors are getting pickier but writing bigger checks when they find the right opportunities. This makes thorough research even more important – the stakes are higher and the margin for error is smaller.
The lessons from doing better research are spreading fast. Companies that use data to make decisions are crushing the ones still going with their gut. The winners are the ones who can crunch numbers and understand markets at the same time.
The smart money is moving toward firms that mix good analysis with real experience. These companies are making money while everyone else is wondering where they went wrong. The old-school firms that won’t change are getting beaten by the ones that do their research.
