I’ve had the joy and privilege to observe closely the trajectory of one of the most inspired entrepreneurs and company builders in the world, Brazilian Jorge Paulo Lemann. Lemann and his two partners, Marcel Herrmann Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira, started with a tiny brokerage firm and from there built one of the most successful investment banks in Latin America. And while the partners were smart and accomplished at managing money, they discovered they had a peculiar genius for building a culture filled with hungry, fanatic people who thrived on meritocracy. They became so good at building culture that they eventually began to consider buying entire companies outright and then running them based on their cultural operating system with the goal to build and grow them forever. “If we believe in our culture,” they said to themselves, “why not bet big on it?

In fact, many outstanding businesses have been successful primarily because of outstanding execution. An Inc. magazine survey of its Inc. 500 (fastest growing private companies) showed that 88% of CEOs attributed their company’s success primarily to extraordinary execution of an idea versus only 12% who attributed success primarily to the idea itself.

In any case, it’s hard to generalize across an entire firm. It usually comes down to individuals. Just like everything else.

So when you reach out to pitch an investor, make sure you’re reaching out to the right person. Talk to founders who have worked with the VC in the past—who’ve gone through tough times together—and find out which partner is operational and helpful and smart and which only cares about the money.

The Kauffman Foundation study also illustrated that almost 86 percent of companies that succeeded in the long term did not take VC money. Why? Because a company’s interests may not always align with the interests of its backers.

Their [Frank Dobbin and Jiwook Jung] results showed that although adding more women to boards did not change the firms’ performance, it led to a decrease in the firms’ stock valuation. These findings highlight an alarming reality: irrespective of the actual performance differences between men and women, people—and, in this case, investors—are unlikely to change their beliefs, and beliefs drive decisions.