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What we learned in studying the most effective founders

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Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#71

Post by resters »

Here's my list of the traits had by the most effective founders:

- strong will to make the vision a reality

- humility to update the vision when appropriate

- natural ability to motivate people to work toward the vision

- the ability to focus and to keep the team focused

- the ability to explore and to keep the team exploring

- the ability to present and fundraise effectively

- luck

All but the last item are not very scarce characteristics (roughly 1 in 200 people has them all in sufficient quantity to succeed as a founder).

The last one is where it gets difficult, and at every iteration the impact of luck gets amplified, to the point where it is actually the signal that everyone is looking for to "pile on" to an early stage endeavor.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#72

Post by emaginniss »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #34
diob wrote: post #31

I'm honestly more interested in studying the most ineffective founders. We spend too much time focusing on survivors, when I feel like the best learning comes from looking at failure. I'd be willing to be there's a lot of failed / failing companies out there doing the exact same thing as the "most effective founders", so what makes them different? I'd be interested to know.

Simple science: you need a control group. The whole "25 things that successful people do" completely ignores the entire question of whether unsuccessful people also do those things, and therefore whether those things have anything to do with success. Survivor bias is so prevalent in any thinking about "what makes someone successful?" that yes, it would be much more effective at this point to consider "what makes some…

"We have found that 100% of successful people breathe at least once a minute"

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#73

Post by stult »

CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #62
zcw100 wrote: post #14

Self help pablum for aspiring founders. I'll just highlight a couple of the ridiculous things in there. "Minimize unnecessary micromanagement". There's just a ton in there. First, micromanagement already has a negative connotation so recommending to minimize it rather than eliminate it is just an obnoxious hedge. Then it doubles down on recommending minimizing only "unnecessary" micromanagement. You just go right ahe…

> This was nice until you get to the bottom of the actual report and find out that Josh has an undergraduate degree in Biology and an MBA. I'm not sure how that shows any expertise in what is being written about but please go on nor how that could possibly qualify you as Chief of Staff at Google Research but there it is. I was with you until this comment. Unnecessary ad-hominem, as well as a misguided premise. It loo…

> Not even sure what a formal education in this context would entail.

An MBA. This is exactly the sort of material MBAs study and there really isn't any other formal educational credential that qualifies someone to evaluate strategies for making a business succeed. Making this particular ad hominem criticism especially ridiculous.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#74

Post by Joel_Mckay »

1. Mitigate risk

2. Corollary of #1: never take a client providing over 10% of your annual revenue, or table personal assets to grow

3. keep your legal positions clear: talk with contract, copyright and trademark lawyers early

4. keep your tax strategy clear: talk with regional corporate accountants, and customs brokers early

5. Prioritize revenue: without a profit-mode your project is not a business

6. Corollary of #5: provide _paying_ customers value they are happy with, or cull the project

7. Manage or be managed: you are running a business, and not a charity. There are several styles for doing this, and no way is perfect. Often hiring friends is a mistake, as when serious money starts to flow people often revert to their primordial rodent brains.

8. Marketing: your conversion rate is below 1.7% ? than adapt/cull the project…

9. low hanging fruit is usually rotten: if it is something some kids can _appear_ to copy to make a quick buck, than the market will quickly fragment. a.k.a. “chasing the long tail” of market distributions is financial suicide

10. admit you can’t know every scam, and accept as a business there are always losses. As a small entity you are vulnerable to all sorts of legal, technological, and personal attacks. Technical people often think being smart somehow immunizes them from cons some sociopaths mastered... it doesn’t... talk with people, and you will see this is a very common bias.

11. With shareholders one must acknowledge the structures of power: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

12. post failed projects on your website as bait, so when the business-intelligence people show-up looking for soft-targets... they too can enjoy the losses... nothing more enjoyable than watching irrationally competitive opportunists go bankrupt pumping money into something you wisely abandoned. ;-)

I wouldn’t call my entities successful by “startup” standards, but they have remained profitable for over 14 years... and they are mine.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#75

Post by saiya-jin »

bko wrote: post #66
diob wrote: post #31

I'm honestly more interested in studying the most ineffective founders. We spend too much time focusing on survivors, when I feel like the best learning comes from looking at failure. I'd be willing to be there's a lot of failed / failing companies out there doing the exact same thing as the "most effective founders", so what makes them different? I'd be interested to know.

I don't think that's why lists like this aren't useful. A simple test would be imagine the reverse were true. For instance, here is the effective traits from the article. - Treat people like volunteers vs treat people like paid employees - Protect the team from distractions vs distract your team - Minimize unnecessary micromanagement vs introduce unnecessary micromanagement - Invite disagreement vs squash all disagre…

I am 100% sure plenty of failed founders do all this and much more. I understand the logic and emotions where this wish list comes from, but reality tends to be more complex. People, and companies change.

Ie being a dick at right moment may allow you to push through situation that would make weaker / more moral ones fail. And about gazillions of other possible examples that may be counterintuitive.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#76

Post by Joel_Mckay »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #8

While there is some decent leadership advice in this article, I can't help but to wonder: all these articles seem to focus on personal leadership qualities, does anyone recommend good articles that focus on other things like socioeconomic status, college/degree level, age, etc? It seems intuitive that @$$hole founders fail, but all things considered equal I intuition also tells me these other factors are equality if…

This book explains all: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#77

Post by zh3 »

bko wrote: post #66
diob wrote: post #31

I'm honestly more interested in studying the most ineffective founders. We spend too much time focusing on survivors, when I feel like the best learning comes from looking at failure. I'd be willing to be there's a lot of failed / failing companies out there doing the exact same thing as the "most effective founders", so what makes them different? I'd be interested to know.

I don't think that's why lists like this aren't useful. A simple test would be imagine the reverse were true. For instance, here is the effective traits from the article. - Treat people like volunteers vs treat people like paid employees - Protect the team from distractions vs distract your team - Minimize unnecessary micromanagement vs introduce unnecessary micromanagement - Invite disagreement vs squash all disagre…

This is a great technnique, and is particularly effective when working out if someone (especially a politician) is saying something meaningful.

"We will strive to make people happier and more productive".

Who would say they strive for the opposite?

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#78

Post by somethoughts »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #34
diob wrote: post #31

I'm honestly more interested in studying the most ineffective founders. We spend too much time focusing on survivors, when I feel like the best learning comes from looking at failure. I'd be willing to be there's a lot of failed / failing companies out there doing the exact same thing as the "most effective founders", so what makes them different? I'd be interested to know.

Simple science: you need a control group. The whole "25 things that successful people do" completely ignores the entire question of whether unsuccessful people also do those things, and therefore whether those things have anything to do with success. Survivor bias is so prevalent in any thinking about "what makes someone successful?" that yes, it would be much more effective at this point to consider "what makes some…

My hunch is that there would be an audience for this stuff. I think the key to this is the go to market model for such content.

There's a pretty established model regarding successful founders who then write books about themselves. The audience seems to be well known and if not presumably a successful founder could self-publish their way to success.

The model for mediocre founders talking about their failures is probably a tough sell to backers as the audience size is unknown and if the founder is unsuccessful they won't be able to self publish.

The best format would probably be a free podcast and where some host would invite other moderately/less than successful founders to talk about their ups and downs. The best bet for the host would be some VC funded moderately successful founder who's startup only 1.5x'd instead of 10x'd snd had to sell the company and now had free time.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#79

Post by arcturus17 »

bko wrote: post #66
diob wrote: post #31

I'm honestly more interested in studying the most ineffective founders. We spend too much time focusing on survivors, when I feel like the best learning comes from looking at failure. I'd be willing to be there's a lot of failed / failing companies out there doing the exact same thing as the "most effective founders", so what makes them different? I'd be interested to know.

I don't think that's why lists like this aren't useful. A simple test would be imagine the reverse were true. For instance, here is the effective traits from the article. - Treat people like volunteers vs treat people like paid employees - Protect the team from distractions vs distract your team - Minimize unnecessary micromanagement vs introduce unnecessary micromanagement - Invite disagreement vs squash all disagre…

“Treat people like volunteers” is such a double-edged concept though. Many of the catastrophic founders I’ve seen treat people like volunteers - in that they think passion will overcome piss-poor retribution and working conditions. It’s easy to think about “treating people like volunteers” when you’ve sorted out how to pay them at least close to market rates. Then yea, seek how to inspire them… But first, you may be better served if you treat them like professionals.

Re: What we learned in studying the most effective founders

#80

Post by karlhughes »

> The most effective founders are not nearly as confident as the least effective founders are...If that’s you, remember it is likely a signal of growth, and not of inevitable failure.

This was good to know. I constantly feel that imposter syndrome, especially as we grow and I am trying to keep my leadership skills at pace with our team size.

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