Building the Dream Team: Entrepreneur Psychology Behind Mexico’s 100M Club. Vol. 1 — Cornershop
On May, ALLVP (Andoni & Lelo de Larrea Venture Partners) published the first edition of Mexico’s 100M club, the first “highscore” of mexican companies that had grown past 100M MXN in venture capital.
As you can notice, ALLVP, along with Endeavor have the best track records in investments within the region.
Needless to say this is no easy feat. Currently, according to their research, there are only 33 companies that have reached this milestone (check out the data). As a psychometrics enthusiast, I have worked the past few years in studying how traits such as leadership, personality and neuropsychological capacities affect someone’s chances at starting up. As part of this peculiar interest, I will be writing a series of posts talking about psychological traits behind founders of Mexico’s most successful startups.
Before starting our analysis, let me brief you on what we’re going to be analyzing. In psychology, most of the studies are correlational. We can identify and explain relationships between different traits within someone’s behavior. This study, obviously works correlating different factors and indicators that can be publicly found from the startup founders.
The latest trend in psychometrics involves and embodies the digital era, the behavior we exhibit online is most likely to be somewhat representative of how we behave in the real world. Initiatives analyzing digital psychometrics have been developed by research centers such as Cambridge, Oxford, MIT etc. and even startups have been built on this, such as Oportunify and Crystal Knows, being the latter the one we will be using for this post.
In order to analyze the founder’s personality, we will be using the DISC assessment:
DISC is a behavior assessment tool based on the DISC theory of psychologist William Moulton Marston, which centers on four different behavioral traits: dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance. This theory was then developed into a behavioral assessment tool by industrial psychologist Walter Vernon Clarke. (Source: Wikipedia, 2017).
We will then correlate the data to communication styles and work-related priorities.
Our digital footprint says more about who we than we may realize. Having said this, let’s start crunching the data, I hope you enjoy the read.
The company we have chosen to start these series is Cornershop, an on-demand delivery service for the Latin American market.
Please meet Oskar Hjertonsson, Daniel Undurraga and Juan Pablo Cuevas, the founders of Cornershop. As you may find online, these founders have an interesting story with a previous exit to Groupon.
The time has come! Let’s get to know these founders!
First up: Oskar Hjertonsson, CEO at Cornershop.mx
Using the DISC assessment, we can find that his personality profile is as follows:
He is considered to be steady and influencing, Oskar is constantly described as someone who can influence someone else whilst appearing stable, this profile, in psychology is often described as SI (Steady/Influencing).
Oskar is very people-focused: Supportive and naturally empathetic with a tendency to dive into long, deep conversations instead of direct, efficient ones. If you are talking to Oskar, listen intently and show empathy.
It comes naturally to Oskar to seek comfort in groups, be accommodating and forgiving with their time and comfort someone in a sad situation. How does his personality influence his communication styles though?
His Steady/Influential profile adopts an attentive and warm communication when interacting with others. Oskar is most likely to influence people not by being charming, but rather by being warm, showing empathy and making sure the other person understands Oskar cares and listens. If you are going to hold a conversation with him, don’t rush right into the professional agenda when working with Oskar. Start with personal anecdotes and small talk to break the ice first.
As you probably start to imagine, personality also reflects and is correlated strongly to other important aspects of our work: Motivation. Are you wondering what motivates a profile such as Oskar’s? Let’s find out:
Oskar enjoys collaboration. Thriving in workplaces with an encouraging and peaceful culture. He will naturally seek warmth and stability within the company.
Surprised?
Let’s start learning how his founding team behaves. Next up, we have Daniel Undurraga, CTO at Cornershop, who according to his personality report works like a general: Bold, pragmatic, skeptical, extremely goal-driven, and most comfortable with control. Let’s see his graph:
His profile can be catalogued as opposite to Oskar’s, as Daniel is more likely to articulate a clear plan of action before a big decision and maximize efficiency in everyday life. Daniel’s profile is normally referred to as Dominant/Calculating (DC). We will later discuss how this makes sense as a team, but meanwhile let’s keep crunching on the data:
As we can see, Daniel’s personality is similarly correlated to his communications style as such was the case with Oskar. Daniel can be found to have a much more direct manner and keep skeptical of results and facts that are thrown at him. If you are planning on having a meeting with Daniel, let it be business or pleasure, make sure to take this advice into account: Use words like “done” and “absolutely”, keep the conversation brief, don’t get offended if they end the conversation abruptly.
Keep it short-and-sweet when talking to Daniel. He is probably thinking through a complex problem or issue and may have little patience for chit chat.
So how does this translate into Daniel’s motivations? I know you are enjoying this, so let’s check it out:
Daniel likes to be in control. Otherwise, there’s a chance he will lose interest. He is competitive and forceful. Pushing to achieve goals quickly. He will intensely thrive to ensure the workplace has ambitious and measurable goals to work towards, which enables him to keep in track of results and efficiency.
It’s different to Oskar huh? Let’s get to meet the third member of Cornershop’s founding team: Juan Pablo Cuevas, COO at Cornershop
Juan is pragmatic, independent, and needs logical reasons for everything — but is able to take a calculated risk when necessary. If you know him, you may know it comes naturally to him to verbally challenge a bold claim about a product, pause a conversation to correct something inaccurate or feel annoyed by an exaggeration. Let’s check out his personality:
Juan Pablo’s personality is referred to as Calculating/Dominant. This may sound similar to Daniel’s; however, for Juan Pablo, the strongest trait is his calculating personality. This entails a few differences for his communication styles and motivators. Let’s get to know him better:
Juan’s pragmatic and emotional appeal will probably fall flat. He is more likely to like being approached in a direct and confident manner. Try to keep any extraneous chatter to a minimum. He will always set clear expectations for the conversation, and he expects these are followed as much as possible.
As we can see, Juan is also skeptical just like Daniel, however, he is not as much into direct communication and is more likely to prefer literal communications. Sarcastic remarks might not be the best way to communicate with Juan Pablo. How does this reflect on his motivations? Let’s see:
Juan might struggle with ambiguity, sarcasm, or abstract ideas. Clearly defined tasks and understood expectations make him feel much more confident in his work. He is strongly motivated by efficiency and accuracy, which results in enjoying being correct, growing in competence & skill and competition.
How does all of this work out as a team?
We have clearly analyzed the individual aspects of the psychology behind the founders of Cornershop. This does not make clear however, how it is they make such a phenomenal team. Let’s check out what our assessment has to say:
As we can see, the strongest side to Cornershop’s founding team relies on their critical and analytical capacities. This is strongly due to the personalities of Juan Pablo and Daniel. However, Oskar is the thoughtful and supportive team member who helps develop a direct and dynamic team.
How does this translate into their roles within Cornershop?
Having Oskar as the CEO makes sense, his influential profile helps him grow and listen to his people by being supportive.
Oskar balances the team and reminds the company that the executive focus is on people. This is strong and makes sense given what a CEO is supposed to do at a company.
Daniel’s leadership in the technology department demands his strong dominant position. Being skeptical, analytical and direct gives him the capacity to cut through the excuses and focusing on growing a technology enterprise. Without Oskar’s support and thoughtful advice, however, they might not have grown this far.
Finally, Juan Pablo runs the Operations. At Cornershop, operations get complicated. Having hundreds of thousands of different shopping and drop off locations leaves little space for errors. His focus in efficiency and accuracy helps him run the shop with precision, which is worth gold to build credibility for Cornershop.
What does this teach us?
When building a team, focus on the strengths. We can clearly see how the founding team has compensatory skills that are a must for them to rock their business. Would Cornershop be the same without Oskar’s thoughtfulness? Or without Daniel’s dynamic and result’s focused personality? What about Juan Pablo’s advocacy for efficiency and accuracy?
The answer is probably no.
Don’t build your team just on skillsets; the success of your company highly depends on communication styles, motivation and personalities. Having the wrong combination of founding team members, or even the wrong positions could have a strong adverse effect on your success.
A leader inspires an organization through his strengths, and finds a way to empower his team, let it be through thoughtfulness like Oskar, dynamism and drive like Daniel, or efficiency like Juan Pablo. They all inspired a team to grow Cornershop, investors to bet on them and customers to trust them. What is in this for you? Don’t try too hard to lead in a specific way, make sure you are focusing on your strengths and finding those who will help you build towards your dreams.
A few tips:
Be honest, to both yourself and your team, about your strengths and limitations.
Find a practical way to compensate and go through limitations.
Don’t hold to positions or roles, trust your team and their strengths.
Try to mix things as much as possible, all personality traits have upsides and downsides when growing a business.
Feel like discussing this further? You can email me at alex@konfront.mx or connect with me on LinkedIn, would love to hear your thoughts on this piece.
