Lifestyle founders vs. lifetime founders: the difference and why you should know.

And that’s a wrap! The final adjustments came together last week as we launched our product in the Apple App Store, hired six more team members, officially closed another funding round, and hosted our official launch party for the app — now available on any iPhone worldwide.

Standing on stage (e.g. standing on a beer crate) at the launch party,
I communicated to a crowd of investors, founders and partners about our mission and vision. And I explained the behavioural change we enable inside the minds of investors and founders when playing their role in the “deal discovery phase” at the very beginning of the “funding cycle”. During my talk
I thought once again: why the hell have I been doing this for so long?

This is a question I often ask myself whilst on endless trips, at countless meetings and during jam packed days with recruitment and investor reports. Don’t get me wrong, it’s what I’ve set out to do for the long run, but it’s so tough to – at scale – make others see what I see!

Deep inside I already knew the answer, the question seems rhetoric in a way, but when building something from scratch other factors come into play such as tiredness, personal priority lists and safeguarding internal intrinsic motivation. I also have a wife and two young children with no family nearby, which I feel is – combined with running a growing company – by far my biggest challenge time-wise that life has thrown at me so far.

Back to lifetime versus lifestyle…

I only know two flavours of founders: lifetime founders and lifestyle founders. The world is densely filled with lifestyle founders and very few lifetime founders.

For investors, spotting a great product is relatively easy. But finding a great founding team of lifetime founders before others do is complex. It’s all about those soft factors and skill sets you don’t just pick up in the latest entrepreneur magazine or in a pitch deck. Especially when they are first-time founders and still undiscovered by the “scene”.

The difference and why you should know..

Lifetime founders tend to build stuff that scales up and they will never throw in the towel. If the company fails, losses are cut and it’s time to start a new firm (maybe with a banking job “sabbatical” for a year to recover from mental and financial loss). The lifetime founders are the serious Makers who have the doer mentality. I believe that lifetime founders are constant learners, regardless if done via recognised institutions (universities, schools), or self-taught.

Now for the lifestyle founders, they are the refined freelancers, consultants and service providers who hang with the Makers disguising themselves as Makers themselves. These are the bulk of people who rarely convert to becoming lifetime founders, as they don’t have that “maker- mentality”, wish, vision, and motivation to build.

With the above I don’t mean to offend, those who are reading will simply recognise themselves and will know what type of founder they really are…
In this case the saying “you become who you spend time with” really does not apply. I mean I couldn’t be Kanye even if we’d live together for a year and he’d try to teach me all he knows… I guess we’re too different ;-)

At the end of the day, the moral of this story is that life needs you to make hard choices, for yourself but also for those around you! I mean, you have to know what type of founder you really are — the sooner the better. Ask yourself if you’re capable of building game-changing technology, lose (out on) a lot now, if you can create a real global impact, and if you think you can run a company that manages and sells your technology. What I’ve learned over the course of the past nine years as a founder is that this is a lifestyle choice that gives you a lifetime plan, so the choice has to be made before starting the journey.

How to become a Lifetime Founder if you’re not one yet….

Lifetime founders have a detailed plan on paper, with their vision for the next five years, anticipated short and long term finances, the whole shabam. If you don’t and it’s all still laid out in your head like a three meal course, I can’t urge you enough to get your plan on paper! Simply put a ten-page visual deck together and a simple A4 excel calculation with your financial plan for the next three years. Articulating your thoughts in writing allows you to take a step back and adapt your plan to what you’re learning and who you should be working with on a daily basis. The above sounds logical, but in practise really isn’t.

And this leads me to my second point: you have to surround yourself with the right people because they will be your strongest support base and not to mention, your most useful devil’s advocate. I’ve learned that spending time with like minded entrepreneurs is inspiring and exciting, but they also help to keep you focused.

Lifetime founders all have the same mission: build technology that matters and has global impact. Inspiring and empowering stuff! The lifetime attitude creates a really strong vibe among founders and definitely shows its true colours through positive growth and success.

I recommend any lifestyle entrepreneur to think about what you actually want, what you can do and how you can do it, because this will give some direction to where your place could be in the world. I’m now building my third company called fundsUP with a mission to take the friction out of early-stage fundraising through data-driven matchmaking. What is your mission?

Make lives better.
Trust your judgement.
Hold on to your beliefs.

Go on and create!