Passion is for pussycats, obsession for founders
Investors look for great founders teams.
You heard that many times. But what does it actually mean. What constitutes a great founders team.
- Team means team. A team of founders is not a founder with a few people joining him or her somehow but multiple founders with more or less equal equity share in the new company.
- Founders who are obsessed, not just passionate about what they do. They make anything humanly possible effort to make their idea come true. If they have to move to a different country, they will. If they have to sell everything they posses they will. If they have to live in a shed and have just barely enough to survive they will.
Passion is for pussycats – obsession for founders
- Great founders are truly intelligent. Meaning they have the skill to solve a problem by simply thinking through most of its permutations even though neither they nor anybody else ever had a solution for similar problems.
- A team of very diverse skills and behavior. Having a generalist working with two specialists (CEO, CTO, CMO). A doer, an analyst and an detailed subject matter expert are best.
- Bold thinking. Not just a hypotheses to grow from 1 to a billion users but a constructed ways and a reasoning why and how to get there. The ability to draw the future like a picture
- NO respect for anything existing and definitely not any investors – just doing what they want to achieve
- Complete independence of capital. Great founders make things happen with nothing. To the contrary those who need somebody else’ money to start are definitely not great founders
- Founders are typically people who can easily attract others: Attract co-founders, attract customers, attract talents, attract investors…
- An unbreakable drive to execute and complete the mission – no matter what obstacle is in their way
- High sense of urgency. Great founders do things significantly faster that their competitors. They have no time for anything but run.