Brett transitioned from public accounting to venture capital and uses DiSC personality assessments and structured founder habit scoring in Redbud's investment process, focusing on backing founders "strengthened by struggle" rather than relying on typical gut-feel evaluations. He's building a national venture brand from Columbia, Missouri while maintaining an unusually proactive outbound strategy of reaching 300 people weekly on LinkedIn and backing founders with or without concrete ideas through his venture studio approach.

• Prioritizing scrappiness and capital efficiency over abundant resources. Believes that operating on a tight budget forces founders to stay closer to the customer and reach profitability faster by avoiding unnecessary hires. A prime example of this preference is a tweet mentioning that the most impressive pitch ever received lacked a presentation entirely, featuring instead an entrepreneur who simply understood their customer deeply.
• Focusing on a founders ability to craft a compelling narrative rather than just explaining the mechanics of their product. Views fundraising as an exercise in making people believe the entrepreneur is uniquely capable of executing a grand vision. For instance, a tweet highlighted that top founders bypass pitching what their company actually does and instead paint a vivid picture of what the world will look like once their solution succeeds.
• Investing in talent regardless of geography and challenging the assumption that startups must be built on the coasts. While acknowledging the density of resources in traditional tech hubs, there is a clear commitment to fostering ecosystems elsewhere. Specific examples include actively hosting networking events for builders in local cities like Columbia, Kansas City, Chicago for legacy industries, and Atlanta for financial technology.
• Valuing extreme obsession, high integrity, and rapid execution over traditional early proof. Recognizes that while resilience drives returns, poor character ultimately destroys companies. To assess these traits, a preference is shown for measuring how fast an entrepreneur moves before they secure funding, using the example of trying to meet builders while they are still in the tinkering phase to accurately gauge their raw execution speed.
• Seeking out uncrowded opportunities that are not currently drawing massive mainstream attention. Believes the best investments are found where there is zero noise and minimal competition. For example, rather than dismissing a market as too small, the suggested approach is to sit down directly with the founder and map out exactly how a niche initial entry point can eventually expand into a massive enterprise.