> In all honesty, my concrete advice would be reaching out to other local founders privately and asked what worked for them and what didn't. Note there usually is a lot to these stories that aren't told in public for many reasons.

This is the best advice. You won't be able to 'interview them' and make a good judgment, the people that have already gone through a process with them know better what they are like. And even then you have to be aware that plenty of these places have 'A' and 'B' teams and that you need to make sure you are comparing apples-to-apples.