The 10x Founder: Jack of All Trades

Back in July of 2019, a meme was born from a Twitter thread from Accel India general partner Shekhar Kirani. It was widely mocked and ridiculed by those who thought that the concept of a 10x engineer was rooted in unhealthy and unrealistic expectations of engineers. Kirani was attempting to call out what would make an ideal engineer, one who is focused, efficient, productive, full-stack, quick to learn and extremely knowledgeable about their code. But he also stereotyped them as unable to work with people (hate meetings, poor team players, bad mentors). While he probably was well-intentioned with his thread, it came across very poorly and the Twitterverse had a field day with it.

While there is no such a thing as a perfect or ideal founder, there are traits and habits that can make a founder more productive and effective. This essay is not meant to be prescriptive but instead inspire self-reflection on how being more of a generalist or partnering with one might benefit you and your business as you build it.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

The political scientist and author Philip Tetlock has suggested that being a jack of all trades and…