The other day I was pointed to an essay about how people are overreacting to Trump. That we should all adopt a wait and see attitude instead. In thinking about how to reply it occurred to me that this is exactly how big companies lose against startups. They wait around to see what the startup will do, and by the time they have figured out that it’s important it is too late to catch up. This is why Andy Grove’s motto at Intel was “Only the paranoid survive.” So working with startups has taught me: don’t wait until it is too late. Protest early and often. We wouldn’t even be here if people hadn’t grossly underestimated Trump to begin with.

Turns out that there are more lessons that I have learned from investing in startups about the Trump presidency. How funds and founders behave before an investment round is an excellent predictor for how they will behave afterwards. Say a fund is rude in their interactions with you as a founder during due diligence, that means there is a high likelihood they will be rude afterwards. So I was not the least bit surprised to see that Trump’s and his team’s habitual, purposeful lying has continued unabated after the inauguration.

Here is another: you can tell a lot about a founder by the people they surround themselves with. Strong founders surround themselves with exceptional people. They recruit talent to a startup that far exceeds their own capabilities and is central to success. Conversely, if someone is weak and insecure they will build a team of people who will not and cannot challenge them. Trump’s cabinet, with a few notable exceptions like General Mattis, is a perfect example of the latter.

Finally, I have done a lot of due diligence on startups over the years. And there are some good lessons from that also. Where there is smoke there tends to be fire and the documents they don’t want you to see are the ones you most need to actually get. We did not look at Theranos, but most professional investors stayed away. Why? Because the company was too hand wavy about how their science works. So Trump’s unsurprising refusal to disclose his tax returns should be a big red flag and we should insist on their disclosure (you can support this by signing the White House petition).