What qualities do you think a founder should have?
There are founders you’d love to NOT work for. And then there are founders whose company you wouldn’t want to leave, no matter what.
A big part of that comes down to people, their values, and their character.
And often, that starts with the founder.
So what makes a great founder?
For me:
– Being ambitious and thinking big
– Being disciplined and leading by example
– Staying curious and always moving with the times – or even staying ahead of them
– Being able to inspire people around them
– Having natural authority and being more of a leader than a manager
– Making tough decisions, even under pressure
– Surrounding themselves with people who are better than them in certain areas
– Being transparent, even when things don’t go according to plan
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Replies
DiffSense
I think the best trait is to know how to manage your own energy. To know how to get the most out of it. Its very hard. And it takes a lot of figuring out. I think most people get this wrong. And the ones that get it right, lead the charge. But its different for everyone. Usually when there is alot of excitment, you can get the most energy out of your self. But excitment is very fleeting.
Honestly, the most underrated quality is knowing when to listen vs when to decide. A lot of founders are great at having conviction but terrible at updating it. The best ones are hard to move but not impossible to move.
RUSTWA
For me just one word is resilient.
Transparency when things go wrong is the one that separates good founders from great ones. Anyone can be inspiring when metrics are up and to the right. The real test is whether people still trust you after you've delivered bad news. That trust compounds over time and becomes the reason people stay even when recruiters come calling.
Tolerance for uncertainty. Everything else — technical skill, product sense, marketing — can be learned or outsourced. But the ability to keep building when you have no idea if it's working, that's the actual filter.