Why Does Tikhon Bernstam Look for Really Large Markets?

Tikhon Bernstam told the Y Combinator podcast that across about 60 angel investments, including Cruise, which sold to GM, plus Gusto, LendUp, Checkr, Optimizely, and Reddit, the first screen is the size of the market. Without a large one, a strong product and a relentless team still struggle. He avoids founders who would fly to a conference that does not help the company. He likes solo founders, and named Drew Houston, who started Dropbox alone. Borrowing from Marc Andreessen, he said a strong team in a great market gets pulled into the right product. Docker came out of dotCloud that way, and Twitch was the gaming piece Justin.tv kept after dropping the rest.