More Overlooked Traits of Successful Startup CEOs
Last month, I highlighted six under-recognized traits of successful startup CEOs (entrepreneurs, founders) and detailed three in my blog. This week, I cover the next three, including what I mean when I say, “Focus on discovering what is right versus being right--quickly.”
Listen to the AI podcast version of this blog post.
Photo by Karolina Kaboompics from Pexels.
New here? I’m John Gauch – a seasoned fractional COO, sales coach and mentor. Over 20+ years, I have applied my growth and operations skills to help dozens of startups, building one high-impact venture to nearly $100M in revenue and a second to exceed that benchmark. I began my career as a tech lawyer in New York City. I developed my expertise in progressive roles in business development, finance, sales, marketing and product, working along the way with companies like Amazon, IBM and Microsoft.
This two-part post is about about critical, often-overlooked traits of startup CEOs (also, entrepreneurs, founders).
In the first post, I wrote how possessing the first three characteristics below is important but not enough to improve your odds of building a successful business.
Creativity and vision.
Passion for the product.
Leadership skills.
Perseverance.
Risk-taking.
Speed.
The following three traits—perseverance, risk-taking and speed—are also commonly associated with startup leaders. Reasonably so, but you must reconsider and expand your understanding of these ideas to be at your entrepreneurial best.
Sometimes, hard work doesn’t get you anywhere.
Challenges and hardships on the entrepreneurial path are inevitable. You do need to be strong and stick with it. Building a startup is an exercise full of uncertainty.
During the Build phase of a startup, there are many unknowns before you achieve product-market fit and solidify your business model. You have a hunch about what might work, but you don’t know with certainty how to reach the desired outcome. You may have it right, sort of right, or completely wrong. Blind dedication to an early hypothesis may get you nowhere.
Rather, you must be resolute and simultaneously open to the possibility that the path forward differs from what you think. Successful startup teams are experts at making unknowns known and reducing uncertainty. In the fastest learning loops possible, figure out what you need to know to solidify your business model. Focus on discovering what is right versus being right—quickly.
Get comfortable with uncertainty over taking huge risks.
You need to be comfortable with some risk if you are building a venture-backed startup or bootstrapped business with similar ambitions. You are taking on a mission into the unknown with many uncertainties after all. So you need to be okay with all that.
But successful entrepreneurship isn’t about gambling or making a single guess, chancing you have it right, and it will all work out.
Entrepreneurs must have a temperament that tolerates uncertainty and a drive to minimize risk—not take risks. Minimize risk by becoming a learning expert. Figure out what isn’t working, what might work, and test it out.
Another way to reduce risk is to carefully steward your resources by raising the capital you need, acquiring early customers and managing how you spend what you bring in. Give yourself and the team as many at-bats (i.e., as much time to learn) as possible.
Make time for what doesn’t seem necessary.
When you ignore or shortchange (or are bad at) the people side of your business, you’ll reduce the odds of your startup succeeding. If the team breaks down, all could be lost. If you succeed, you’ll either create a place where people hate to work or need to spend a lot of time and money later to fix a mess.
Instead, consider the organization a top priority or even your “first product.”
Culture results naturally from what we prioritize and how we do what we do every day. Build the organization daily by simply behaving the way you want the team to act. Be today the way you want the business to be tomorrow.
Remember the four Cs to start if you’re unsure how to do this. (I added one final C to Edgar Schien’s original three). Be curious, caring and committed when interacting with others, and be competent in your work. You’ll create a trusting environment where people want to work that will become self-sustaining.
Read part 1: Overlooked Traits of Successful Startup CEOs.
If you’re curious at all about me or what I do, see how I help startup CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs on my services page.
Overlooked Traits of Successful Startup CEOs
To build a successful startup is hard. Worth it, but hard. It takes a rare combination of skills and abilities. However, we must expand and add some nuance to the traits we commonly associate with startup CEOs and founders.
Listen to the AI podcast version of this blog post.
Photo by Dima Valkov from Pexels.
In case you’re new here, I’m John Gauch – a seasoned fractional COO, sales coach and mentor. Over 20+ years, I have applied my growth and operations skills to help dozens of startups, building one high-impact venture to nearly $100M in revenue and a second to exceed that benchmark. I began my career as a tech lawyer in New York City. I developed my expertise in progressive roles in business development, finance, sales, marketing and product, working along the way with companies like Amazon, IBM and Microsoft.
Startup CEOs are incredible—superhuman when at their best.
Building a successful and sustainable business is rare; creating one that also scales to the 10s of millions of dollars in revenue is a feat; building an organization where people thrive and love to work too, well, that’s a hat trick. What’s more, as CEO, you put your integrity on the line in persuading others to join you in this challenging task--when there’s no sure way to ensure the desired outcome.
People often highlight as top traits of startup CEOs (also, entrepreneurs and founders) things like:
Creativity and vision. Yes.
Passion for the product. Yep.
Leadership skills. No doubt.
Perseverance. For sure.
Risk taking. Has to be.
Speed. Of course.
I agree, and I firmly believe there are other related traits that are as (or more) essential to startup CEOs and founding teams who want to succeed.
In this blog post, I cover why the first three items above are important but not enough. See next week’s blog post for a discussion of the final three.
Being visionary and creative means looking backward.
Creativity involves combining different ideas floating around our heads into something new (IdeaFlow), and building a new business is as much about the current day and the past as a vision for the future. Startup CEOs need to be experts at using what you already know and looking backward.
Computer scientist Kenneth Stanley uses the analogy of “stepping stones” when discussing breakthrough innovation.
The successful entrepreneur sees what is about to be possible in the world based on what’s already happened and what’s emerging right now. You see when one missing stone (an emerging social phenomenon or technology, for example) is just appearing, which will enable you to create something for the very first time. I imagine a river with two banks. The stepping stones help us hop, from stone to stone, from one bank to the other. The startup “visionary” sees the constellation of stones snap into place that allows us to build a new-to-the-world, high-impact product and business.
The product is important but secondary.
As a CEO, founder, entrepreneur, you need to be passionate about your business idea and product, and you need to commit to another ideal. You need to be dedicated to understanding the problem that your product solves in your customers’ lives. You need to become the absolute expert in the particular struggling situation that leads a large number of people to seek a better way to get something meaningful done in their lives.
This focus on the problem—over the product—serves as a true north that keeps your business focused early on and avoids straying later. The insights from deeply understanding the problem will make all your other decisions—about what to prioritize in the product roadmap, which go-to-market channels you should pursue, how to talk about the product in sales meetings or marketing, and so much more—obvious. It’s a gift that keeps giving.
Leadership isn’t about being the only star.
Of course, a startup CEO is ultimately responsible for the business. This does not mean you need to do all of the work. Early on, one of your most urgent jobs is showing traction with customers, or once you’ve gotten traction, scaling up.
You should prioritize and focus on the work that only you can do, and if that takes up all of your time, you need to get help with the rest. You need to tap into the ingenuity of other human beings you trust.
I’m not talking about you assigning work and telling people how to do what they are tasked with. I’m talking about delegation where you share the outcome you seek and allow your teammate to choose a path to that destination. This may still require and involve a ton of communication and collaboration across the organization, which is completely fine. You need your team.
Read part 2: More Overlooked Traits of Successful Startup CEOs
To listen to the podcast version of
If you’re a startup CEO, founder or entrepreneur, and I might be helpful in some way, I’d love to connect. Learn about my services and please reach out if that makes sense.