The most important trait of an aspiring entrepreneur - be there or be square

I think that one reason the author feels that this is "the most important trait" is because of selection bias. He says in the article that he does not trust anyone who isn't punctual. Therefore, if there are entrepreneurs out there who are successful despite not being punctual, he would never do business with them, and they would fall off his radar screen before becoming successful.

Certainly there are successful entrepreneurs out there who are habitually late. The Google founders had a punctuality problem in the beginning that became enshrined in the company culture; when I joined I was quickly educated about "Google standard time", which runs 7 minutes behind wall-clock time. One of Larry's first actions when he became CEO was to try to change this culture, which he's largely succeeded at with new hires, although many executives who were there in the old days are still habitually 7-15 minutes late to meetings.

I think a more accurate model of the world is that there are some people who care deeply about punctuality, and there are some other people that show up when they show up. And the two camps don't interact much, because the latter folk are inscrutably annoying to the former, and the fact that the former are annoyed is inscrutably annoying to the latter. So everybody thinks that most of the people in the world are like them, when it's really because they simply refuse to associate with the people who are not.

If you're a founder, the best way to harness this dynamic is to be "strict with what you output but lenient in what you accept." Always show up to your appointments on time, but carry a smartphone or something with you so you can do something productive and not get too annoyed when a person is late. That will let you interface with the greatest number of people, which exposes you to the greatest number of opportunities.

I'd further venture that each of these styles correlates with other traits that are desirable in an organization. Lateness correlates with creativity and deep problem-solving ability; someone who is "in the zone" solving a tricky problem is very likely to lose track of time and miss their next appointment. Punctuality correlates with planning and organizational skills; someone who can manage their own time is far more likely to be able to manage somebody else's. I suspect that Larry's culture change is because the needs of Google as a large company are very different from Google as a startup - the culture was driving away planning & organizer types who are very necessary for coordinating the work of hundreds of people. And the cost of that is that the new, more rigid culture drives away creative types, which is why so many recent products (outside of X and acquisitions) have been ho-hum.

It's funny but looking at it, there's a lot of truth to this. I've seen this a few times where some of the best entrepreneur or investors I met were almost always right on time, but were also very efficient with theirs - you can get a lot done with those guys / gals in an hour, so even if they didn't have a lot of time for you they really made very good use of it.