As an early-stage VC, you spend time with tons of of incredible startups, making an attempt to establish potential winners by enthusiastic about market dimension, enterprise mannequin and competitors. Nonetheless, deep down you understand that in the long term, all of it comes all the way down to the group and the founder(s).
After we have a look at essentially the most profitable firms in our portfolio, their wonderful efficiency is largely due to the founders. Nevertheless, even after 20 years within the business, I’ve to confess that analyzing the group continues to be essentially the most difficult a part of the job. How do you consider a younger first-time entrepreneur of an early-stage firm with little traction?
The very best founders are humble and nicely conscious of their weaknesses and limitations in addition to the potential challenges for his or her startup.
At Creandum, up to now 18 years, now we have been lucky to work with a few of Europe’s most profitable startup founders reminiscent of Daniel Ek from Spotify, Sebastian Siemiatkowski from Klarna, Johannes Schildt from Kry, Jacob de Geer and Magnus Nilsson from iZettle, Emil Eifrem from Neo4J, Christian Hecker from Commerce Republic and lots of extra.
After some time, we realized that these unbelievable entrepreneurs all share some basic traits. All of them have plenty of vitality, work onerous, present persistence, perseverance and resilience. However on prime of that, all these unicorn founders share 5 key traits that, as an investor, you must search for whenever you again them at an early stage.
They know what they don’t know
Many individuals anticipate a typical startup founder to be very assured and have a powerful gross sales mentality. Whereas they need to positively dwell as much as these expectations, the most effective founders are additionally humble and nicely conscious of their weaknesses and limitations in addition to the potential challenges for his or her startup.
They maintain desirous to be taught, enhance and develop the enterprise past what common individuals have the vitality and drive to handle.
