Proportionally speaking, I rarely make referrals and intros. Numerically speaking, I set up more intros than the average person. Frankly, if I made every intro that people have asked of me, I’d be out of social capital. It’s not to say I’m never willing to spend or risk my social capital. And I do so more frequently than most people might find comfortable. In fact, the baseline requirement for my job is to be able to put my neck on the line for the startups I’m recommending. The other side of the coin is that I’ve made more than a few poor calls in my career so far. That is to say, I’m not perfect.
I only set up intros if I can see a win-win scenario. A win for the person who wants to get introduced. And a win for the person they will be introduced to. The clearer I can see it, the easier the intro is to make. The less I can, the more I look for proxies of what could be one.
This largely has been my framework for introducing founders to investors, as well as potential hires, partners, and clients. Over the years, I realized that I’ve also been using the same for people who would like an intro to someone above their weight class.
Below I’ll share the 4 traits – not mutually exclusive – of what I look for in world-class founders.
- Insatiable curiosity
- Bias to action
- Empathy
- Promise fulfillment
Insatiable curiosity
The insatiably curious have a tendency to be voracious learners. The more questions they have, the more answers they will try to seek. The more answers they find, the more precise their questions will be.
What do you know now that you wish you know six months ago?
What questions are you asking? Which of those answers do you have? How did you find them? Which are you still seeking? How do you plan to find them?
Here I look for specificity of thought and curiosity. Balaji Srinivasan and Chris Dixon call it spending time in the idea maze. While the best founders spend time in that maze, they’ll eventually stumble across their earned secrets. Secrets that they’ve learned through hell and back. Through blood, sweat, and tears. Secrets they know that others won’t know if they’ve never been in the weeds.
What do you know that the rest of us don’t?
You can find more of my thoughts on where to find these curious founders here and here.
Bias to action
This concept goes hand-in-hand with insatiable curiosity. The insatiably curious exhibit high biases towards action. Without ever testing any ideas or going out to find the answers you seek, one is never truly curious. Curiosity becomes more of a hobby, rather than a career. World-class founders who make curiosity their career – their calling – are the ones who have a chance at changing the world as we know it.
What have you tried? What worked? And what didn’t?
Of what worked, how did you systemize your learnings? And of what didn’t, why didn’t they work? Which underlying assumptions proved to be wrong?
As Steve Jobs once said, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Empathy
Empathy comes in two forms:
- One of which you know
- The other of which you understand
Along the founding journey, you’ll meet and learn from many of your customers and potential customers (I write more on Bangaly Kaba‘s adjacent user theory here). You’ll hear stories of the scar tissue they’ve built up. Of stories that are starting to write because of you. There will be many. But there are (and will be) a rare few you will never forget till the day you die. And those few will teach you lessons of understanding that no other experience or class will ever eclipse.
Founders who know those stories by heart and share their inspiration to inspire others, like myself, deserve that gold star.
Promise fulfillment
If they have all the above – promises they’ve fulfilled to themselves, then they have a track record of fulfilling promises made to others. They know the value of other people’s time. If they ask for advice, they will act on it. As my first mentor told me 6.5 years ago, “If you want my advice, you better take it seriously.”
Similarly, the best founders will rarely waste another individual’s time – could be a customer, an investor, an advisor, a team member, a potential hire, etc. Some proxies include:
- Knowing their week’s schedule like the back of their hand
- Rarely, if ever, appearing late to a meeting
- Following up
- Following up after acting on someone’s advice with its respective results
- They won’t ask “How can I help?” unless they mean it and have an idea of how they can help already
- They prioritize shipping a 70%-complete product (as long as the core features are working) over missing the deadline to ship a perfect product. They will miss a deadline every so often, as is the nature of the business.
In closing
I like to think of insatiable curiosity, bias to action, empathy, and promise fulfillment on a path, where the prior trait will lead to better understanding of the next. Each trait reinforces the others, building a symbiotic ecosystem for growth.
With all rules, there are exceptions. And my rule of thumb is not immune to that fact. Nevertheless, this rule of thumb has proven incredibly useful in discovering world-class founders. Some might even call this – an investment thesis.
Photo by David Monje on Unsplash
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