I don't mean cliches like "perseverance" and "patience". But what specific traits are required to be a founder in the US (excluding things like being born rich and preexisting social connections)?
Resilient, the ability to get repeatedly knocked down on a daily basis yet spring back up.
I mean who else gets a bug in their code and spend the next eight hours scouring documentation and fiddling with their code until it's fixed?
I think it's that plus a vision and the ability to step outside comfort zones to tackle problems way outside your normal scope of work.
- If your very frustrated working in an organisation but still give it your all
- If you occasionally tend to annoy co-workers with your enthusiasm or commitment (not for boot-licking purposes)
- If you constantly try to learn new things beyond your role
- If you really love building things (seeing the end result, not just the building part)
- If you view money as an "enabler" and not an end goal in itself
A trait thats typically lacking in "founders" but found in most business owners is a very innate understanding of money, profit/loss and business principles. IE selling things since childhood. This is obviously helpful, but it's not a requirement. Especially if your happy to aim for a moonshot rather than set up a small business. Moonshot's aren't generally the wisest financial bets - but are the most fun for the the people with the above traits.
1. Determination. How badly you want something? If it is not bad enough., you will find excuses to NOT do it and at some point, you will give up. Be very determined. Don't let anything stop you
2. Battle Picker: I couldn't come up with a better term but don't try to win all battles. Focus on the "core" of what really matters and other things will take care of themselves.
3. Focus: I struggle a lot with this one. Can you be focussed and not stray into too many things? To be a successful founder of any business, focus is really important. Linked to #1 in some ways.
4. Be good with people. You want to be a founder and build a company? Great, now go learn how to deal with people. People who are not just your clients but also who look up to you (your employees). Can you take shit from people? Can you not make it personal?
5. Skill Sharpener. What new things have you learned this week? Always be learning. Whatever it is. Soft skills, tech skills, sales skills. Learn.
6. Determined but flexible: Ok so you don't want to give up but are you smart enough to realize that you need to do some things differently ? perhaps a change in strategy ? Be determined but don't be stupid and be willing to change if that is needed.
7. Learn how to delegate. This is so important if you want to build a team. You cannot do everything by yourself (unless you want to be a solo indiehacker type). Find people who are good at something you are not and let them do that for you. Rinse and repeat.
8. Are you a visionary ? Successful founders always have a vision, a vision of where things should be in the next 2,3,6,12 months and later. Can you think that far but still do little things in the present ?
Oh, and definitely not patience. If anything, they've been some of the least patient people I know.
Perseverance, leadership, determination are all important but believing in your mission is what makes you a founder.
This is an everyday necessity for any founder
So here goes:
1) Intrinsic Motivation: External motivation is easy to come by and can just as easily vanish or simply be forgotten. Building a company in order to make money, seize a market opportunity, or earn recognition is fine and can get you by for a time, but when times get tough and the road ahead isn't clear you need to be able to rely on your own internal motivation to get you through. If you have a reason, deep in your bones, that you _need_ to be a founder, to build a company, and to solve a specific problem for a specific person, then that's a great trait to have.
2) Being Able to Make Decisions & Change Your Mind: As a founder, you have to make decisions. Lots of them. Every day. Sometimes they're little ones (ideally you delegate more and more little decisions as you build out a team) and quite often they're big ones that could potentially crater your whole company. As a founder, you need to be able to stand behind your decisions and justify them (AKA, sell them) to your team. On the other side of the coin, you have to be able to change your mind based on new data and/or perspectives. Being able to accept a variety of data points, assimilate that information, and make a clear decision is key.
3) The Ability to Step Back: This is the biggest thing I've had to develop in myself. The ability to take a step back, get out of the day-to-day thinking, and consider how the company's activities today are contributing toward what you want the company to turn into in 3/5/10 years. If you suddenly face a large setback, you have a lot of options open to you but you have to identify which ones will both solve your short-term problem but also keep you on the path to building what you set out to build.
4) Committing to Doing Your Job: Sometimes, you just have to be able to commit to doing your freaking job. You're the founder and that job description is going to change over time. In the first 6-12 months, you might be doing everything. But, as you grow and hire people to help you, you've gotta stop trying to do everything and be involved in every aspect of your business. There comes a time when you have to get out of the weeds because that's just not your job anymore. I see a lot of founders who can't make that shift to the detriment of their companies.
Those are some of the traits that I think a founder would be blessed to have, though there are many more to be sure. I think the important thing to consider is that there's no model. There's no recipe where traits X + Y + Z == A Great Founder. If a would-be founder reading this entire thread has no trait other than Intrinsic Motivation, I think that person has a shot at being a successful founder.
For me, it's been about seeing what common traits there were among successful founders and deciding,
A) which of those traits I could adopt or develop, B) which of the traits I could ignore because I didn't have them, and C) which of the traits I could hack my way into or around.
This thread is very timely because I'm in the middle of writing a blog post about how to lead a company as an extremely introverted Type B person. At the start of my personal journey as a founder, I didn't think that I had any of the traits that successful founders had. I wasn't competitive, I wasn't outgoing, I wasn't able to burn the candle at both ends, I was absolutely terrified of sales calls and presentations, etc. Let me be clear — none of that has magically changed over the last three years. But I figured out how to fake it with some of those things and/or develop a hack for it (e.g., I only schedule presentations and sales call at specific times in the day when my social energy is high enough and I consider the whole exercise to be like stepping on stage and playing a role for an hour; I don't have the trait of being outgoing and comfortable talking to people, but I've figured out how to play that role well and it works). Would someone who inherently has these traits have an easier time and see more success than I have? Possibly. But I have that Intrinsic Motivation (and I can't get rid of it!) so I'm going to find a way to make it work with what I have.