"I bet on jockeys, not horses," Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the MIT Media Laboratory and an active angel investor, once told me. He was describing his strategy of placing more trust in the people who run a company than in its products and business plan, a strategy that reflects the common reality that a startup's initial plan often fails, for any number of reasons. The product may work well but not attract a single sale, or as is often the case in high tech, the product development may not go anywhere near as well as was hoped. A founder's ability to face down failure and rebound is a critical consideration for any investor, and virtually every successful entrepreneur has a near-death tale or two to tell. (I have several.) Conjuring up a winning Plan B when the fan is blowing brown requires a certain ineffable combination of decisiveness, perseverance, unconventionality, and plain old-fashioned luck.

Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Waltham, MA-based Minerva Biotechnologies, is still on her first startup, so she has yet to chalk up a major entrepreneurial victory, but her life is full of the lemons-to-lemonade stories that investors love to hear. At first glance, there is little remarkable about a 51-year-old scientist with a successful biochip invention behind her setting up her own startup laboratory. What is unusual is that 15 years ago she was an artist and stay-at-home mother with five school-age children, no higher-education degrees, and no scientific background whatsoever.