Entrepreneurial Essentials: The Pillars of Founder Success
DESCRIPTION
This discussion revolves around what Phuong and I believe to be the essential qualities of a successful founder. We emphasize four key traits: grit, consistent execution, humility, and integrity. Phuong highlights how successful founders possess unwavering determination despite setbacks, actively learn from failures, execute plans effectively, remain open to feedback, and prioritize ethical decision-making, understanding its impact on the business long-term. I personally stress the importance of acknowledging and learning from failures while emphasizing the necessity of getting back up after setbacks. We both agree that these characteristics outweigh factors like education, wealth, or intelligence in determining success. The discussion concludes by underscoring the enduring significance of these traits for founders navigating the complexities of entrepreneurship.
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TRANSCRIPT (this is an automated transcript):
MPD: Welcome, everybody. I'm Mark Peter Davis, managing partner of Interplay. I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs advance society. And as if you've listened before, this podcast is definitively part of that effort. tOday we've got Fong. She's going to come in and lay some wisdom down. She has run through a list of what makes a founder a good founder.
I would say within the walls of Interplay, this is probably a fairly universally agreed upon list. And I think it's really important for everyone to hear, and it may not be what people expect, and if you hear it, and it doesn't describe you in some ways go listen to Fong's segment on the Superman analysis, the idea that you be really honest in a self assessment inventory, identify your gaps, and hire to fill them.
If there are things in here that are character flaws, time to meditate, get a coach if those don't land with you. But this is to me the list that separates the predictable winners from the others. So I hope it is helpful to you. Best of luck. Enjoy.
Phuong: Today, I wanted to talk about a topic that Mark, you and I have discussed a lot which is what makes a good founder. So over the years, we've worked with a lot of founders here to interplay and everyone is really different. I don't think there's one archetype of a good founder. But, we have identified some patterns and the characteristics that a lot of really successful founders have, and I wanted to share them with you today.
Now, as you're listening to this, if you're a founder and you realize you're lacking in some of these areas, don't freak out. I think 1 of these qualities you might be able to hire into. But most of them really do have to come from you. So I think it's just good to have that awareness and improve however you can.
So the first trait we identified is grit. I think this is one of the most important qualities in my opinion. No, being a founder is hard. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. No, it's the whole high highs and low lows thing, but successful founders don't get too discouraged when things go wrong, even better, they learn from their mistakes and they use failures to get even more motivated to succeed.
When something goes wrong, they try to understand why, and they use that learning to figure out how they can 10X it next time. When we're looking for CEOs here at Interplay, we specifically say we're looking for people who can walk through walls without a helmet. I think successful founders have unrelenting ambition.
If you don't, I don't think you're going to get, have a shot at making it past the low lows, which I know you're going to have no matter how good you are. Second trait, I think, is the ability to execute consistently. This trait, I think, is equally as important as grid. Good ideas are, pretty easy to come by, I think.
But the ability to execute on those ideas, to take a concept and then turn it into rea a reality with the right strategic planning, with the right resource allocation and thoughtful decision making, that's what builds businesses. Successful founders are doers. They have a high balance towards action.
Mark, I would say that this is one of your defining characteristics. Even though you have plenty of ideas, maybe too many. I'm always so impressed. I'm always really impressed that when we nail something down, you're the one that's okay, how do we get this done? What are the steps? Who do we need?
Who's doing the Gantt chart? Why is this taking so long? But this is exactly what you need, because if things go undone, you'll never reach your goal. Third trait, I think, is humility, also an important one. Successful founders know that they don't have all the answers, and that they can and should learn from others.
They're open to feedback, and they're always looking for opportunities to improve. This is especially important to me as I assess companies to invite to the interplay in an incubator. The founders we work with have to be coachable. if They're not, we can't help them. They already know everything.
We can't leverage our expertise to guide them. Great leaders know that they need to seek out help from different sources. They know to ask the right questions and then to bring those insights back to the company. The last one is integrity. I think this one is often overlooked and undervalued. As a founder, honesty, ethics, and a commitment to doing what's right for the business is essential.
Yeah, sure. Sometimes it's easier to cut corners and to shift the accountability and make decisions that make you look good in the short term, maybe to your investors. But maybe they're not so great for long, the longterm, but good founders don't do this. They know that having integrity impacts all parts of their business because it builds trust with their team and their customers.
That's a really powerful tool to attract talent as well as business. So yeah, those are the four that I came up with. I think I'm probably missing a few others, but these are the ones that we really do see over and over again. You
MPD: know, I didn't Know that list before you just went through it, that you were going to say those.
I think anyone on our team would have written the same four out. We talk about all of these a lot. I do want to put a, an asterisk on the first one, on the grip. No matter who you are and how impervious you are to failure, guilt, conflict, emotions, you're going to get really low. I get knocked down all the time.
I tell my kid, I told my kids recently, I said the... The key to my success has not been how I succeeded, it's how I failed, how I win, how I fail, and I get gut punched all the time. And I think it's important to be okay feeling bad about it. It's important to take those feelings and feel them. The key is day, two days, three days later, you get back up and you're like, fuck it, I'm ready to get back in the fight.
And that's the thing. So I think if you're like judging yourself for feeling bad about something or. lEt's say you did the right thing in a business negotiation, but the other person has different values or viewpoints, and they made you feel really bad. Like your question, you're fine.
Feel bad about it for a little bit. Feel your feelings. The question is, what do you do after? And the people who get back up and keep getting their ass kicked, but keep getting back up. That's great. That's great.
Phuong: Yeah. And then using that, that those mistakes or, those lows to really motivate you to do even better.
I think that's a really great way of weaponizing the, all the shit that happens
MPD: to you. Yeah, I think that's, and that part plays into the humility, right? Being humble enough to say, okay, someone knocked me down. I'm probably not completely not like innocent. What did I do wrong?
Learn from it. Get the fuck back up, put your chin up, take another punch. That's it. That's the game. If people have those four characteristics, it's going to work out. I think those four characteristics trump where you went to school, how wealthy you are. And even how smart you are, yeah, I think those 4 are more important.
Yeah,
Phuong: yeah, I had smarts up here. It was just like, really further down the list for me. I think it's great to be smart to be an expert at maybe what, your business is about, but I think having these I think you can really, outdo. Knowledge and and smarts.
MPD: Yeah. I'll bet on people with low pedigree with these characteristics over high pedigree without them all day. And I'm certain that will pay off. That has become a very clear pattern in all of the company building and hiring we've done over the years. It's these four things. Gold standard.
Cool. Thank you, Fung. Good one.
All right everyone, thanks for listening to that. tHis is a super important topic. If you couldn't tell just from the way we ran through it, probably of all the stuff we go through, this is one of the few things that. Maybe as a least adaptable or changeable in the company, right? We're talking about a lot of tactical stuff, you can go and change those things.
But for those who are unsure of how to navigate or how to evaluate what success is going to look like in a team, hopefully this clarifies. Particularly on the integrity side, you as a founder, if you're listening to this and you are a founder, you will be faced with No end situations, rocks and hard places.
Hopefully this list of four, particularly the integrity gives you a pole star to help you find your way in those moments of darkness. And with that, we'll catch you next week.