10X Founders
I was too young and carefree (and stupid) to think about things like this when I was a co-founder. Now 8 years later and on the other side of the table, I’ll make an attempt at summarizing some personal observations on what makes a 10X Founder.
At GSV, we talk about People as the first of four investment tenants (People, Product, Potential, Predictability). Timing and luck helps, but it’s usually the best founders who attract the best teams that create the unicorns.
Authentic
While some of the best founders are outgoing extraverts but others are shy and awkward. External expressions of personalities vary, but great founders all have one thing in common at their core: authenticity.
They have a genuine desire to create something in the world to make it a better place. They are not starting a company just to take advantage of an opportunity. The best founders usually have had an interest in a field for a long time even before they started their company. In a sense, they’ve aligned their lives to a challenge.
Authenticity is critical. To make a new venture work, the founders have to inspire each other, a team, customers, and investors. The odds are so stacked against startups that the only way to win is to have the best team and best investors. The best people can smell anything less than authentic from a hundred miles away. Only authenticity—in belief in your product, your problem, your mission — can inspire people to follow.
Many people talk about passion. I would replace passion with authenticity. Passion sometimes gets conflated with energy and extraverts. Whether someone is gregarious or reserved, the core trait is genuinely caring about making something exist in the world.
Product
10X Founders have a precise and clear vision of what problem their product should solve for.
Many people have grand visions of what their companies may look like one day — how many employees they’ll have, what kinds of perks will be available, what impact on the world they will have once they’ve solved the problem.
But the necessary prerequisite is having a clear vision of how to build the first product and how to evolve it from there. You could have the “cure for cancer” company of your industry, but without the details that goes into getting a product out to market, the delivery will fall short of the vision.
A great company starts with a great product.
Builder
Building implies a long term mentality. It requires persistent, commitment, and the ability to evolve and be learning machines.
For 10X Founders, building never ends. Builders know there are problems in the process and there will be mistakes made. Building something big and long-lasting requires both patience and the view that you simply cannot fail.
That sense of inevitability — that you can’t fail—is an exceedingly rare trait, but one that the best founders have.
Those are some of the core traits I look for in founders.
10X Founders are Authentic Product Builders.
This post is inspired by my friend (who I will call Eric) and the film Kon-Tiki based on a true story of a 5,000 mile ocean expedition that captures the journey of an authentic team who cared greatly about their mission, built a great product and believed that they could never fail.
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