Sunday Service: Talent Spotting Lessons from Football Scouts.
Intangible skills. Reps matter. Potential over credentials.
The sports industry has one of the most effective and established talent scouting systems. For instance, an English Premier League football club may have 10-15 scouts operating globally. That’s 200-300 scouts across the league who, in the words of sports journalist Michael Calvin, are “out there in all weathers, at all times.” He calls them the “Nowhere Men.” They are “the ones at 1 a.m. driving down the M1 with a pork pie in one hand and the wheel in the other.”
The venture capital industry could draw a few lessons about talent from football, which is why I enjoyed listening to this interview with Darren Robinson, the former head scout of Birmingham City football club. The podcast inspired me to read more about football scouts, and to that end, here are three ideas I took from the brief survey.
Observation 1: Seek Out the Intangibles that Data Fails to Capture.
Sports recruitment teams embraced data and advanced analytics long before data-driven investing became a thing in venture capital. But to this day, there are still qualities in football that a well-researched scout report or highlights reel cannot capture.
“At the moment, data cannot measure who leads, who cajoles, who’s the influencer,” says Darren Robinson. So it isn’t just about the technical skills of a player. Scouts need to know about the intangibles. Qualities such as leadership, work ethic, resilience, and character matter. Yet, these factors are not easily quantifiable despite their meaningful impact on success.
“Footballing ability comes first but is sometimes only half the reason a player is approached, and scouts have been known to bin a recommendation purely on poor body language in a warm-up or when celebrating a goal.” - Gerard Brand
Observation 2: The More Startups You Review, the Better You’ll Get.
Earlier this week, I wrote about the VC funnel and how the number of startups you review matters. Turning into a great talent scout in other domains is no different. Here’s an extract from the Sky Sports series, “The Art of Scouting”, which sums up this point. The quote is from an ex-professional football player who turned into a manager.
“The more games they see, the better they become,” Robinson says. “There’s no good scout that’s only watched 10 games, that knows what he’s doing. I can promise you that. The ones I’m talking about have got thousands and thousands of games, listened to hundreds of managers and spoken to thousands of coaches.”
Observation 3: Performance Must Be Assessed Alongside Potential.
In the article “How Do England Scouts Spot Future Talent,” the English Football Association highlights prediction as a key skill. Scouts must consider a player’s trajectory alongside everything else.
“It’s about getting the scouts to think about the here and now, but to have one eye on prediction,” says Richard Allen, the ex-head of talent at the FA.
VCs have to do the same. It’s not just about assessing what a founding team has achieved already. Investors must also evaluate the trajectory that entrepreneurs are on. And to generate significant alpha, VCs have to invest early, at the right time, and before the rest of the world catches on.
Reading about football scouts has taught me that football might be a world away from venture capital, but when searching for talent is at its best, the two worlds could not be any more similar.
To close, here’s another gem from Calvin that resonated.
“I was there when the seeds of natural talent began to germinate; this may occur in a park, or on a non-league gluepot. It may be destined to flower in one of the cathedrals of the game, but it beckons only those who comprehend its potential.” - Michael Calvin
Takeaways
The intangible qualities of talent matter just as much as the quantifiable skills.
The more founders and startups you review, the better you’ll get at spotting talent.
Take a dynamic view of talent and evaluate trajectory alongside past performance.