When starting your own business for the first time - what are characteristics, features, elements that VCs look for (in owner or company) when prior success or history isn't available?

VCs are looking for a reasonable chance to see a 10x or more return on their investment. That's it. What usually tells them this is possible is measurable exponential growth in customer base and revenue, and a potential market in the $100M+ range. If you can't deliver both of those, nothing else will matter because they'll ignore you. If you can deliver both, other things won't matter much. But questions like this hint at a misconception that VC money is some sort of reward for doing well. It isn't. The purpose of VC money isn't to reward founders, it's to grow bigger and faster. It should be spent, every cent of it, on growth.

1. Team - experienced, professional people that can work together. People with good resumes and good connections. 2. Money multiplier - a VC isn't looking for profitable businesses. They need your venture to be sold / go to IPO within the fund's lifecycle (4-5 years), and they need it to make them hundreds of millions of dollars. They need the single profitable investment that is going to make up for all their other investments. This can not be achieved by creating a simple profitable business. 3. B2C - a corollary to item 2 - you need to aim for a very large business and expect millions of users, so you must be B2C, and probably also free. 4. Match to portfolio - VCs have investment patterns - try to find what tey are looking for - are they trying to diversify? are they interested in a certain niche? technology? 5. Relationship - VCs like developing relationships with start-ups. You might meet them for your seed round, keep in touch during development and only get a term sheet for the second round of funding.