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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Persistence (the top of the list)
Clear Thinker aka Great Storyteller
Not behind materialistic pleasures aka can have a stingy lifestyle - in short Ability to be in the game LONGER
Brilliant at Observing and Listening
Authentic & Disciplined
Better Organized and good at Prioritization
Coachability is probably the most underrated quality for me. A founder needs enough conviction to keep going when others doubt the idea, but also enough intellectual honesty to recognize when customers or data are proving an assumption wrong.
The quality I value most is the ability to update without losing conviction. A founder has to care deeply enough to persist, while still letting user behavior, technical evidence, or bad news overturn a favored idea. Building Lernex and Metis creates plenty of opportunities to confuse effort with correctness. I want to stay loyal to the learning problem, not to any particular feature or architecture that fails to earn its place.