SeedBlink Blog

Most of the time, an element of performance or success is easy to spot and immediately attributed to the quality of the founders. But how can we measure "quality", when it is an absolutely subjective attribute that largely depends on who is evaluating it?

This is impossible because value judgments are made by different people with very different interests, logics and arguments. We have identified a general framework of "quality", without pretending to have objectified the term. So, "quality" is therefore influenced by the following factors: character, discipline, transparency and flexibility. There are many other determining factors, but these four deserve individual evaluation.

Character

Quality is above all a matter of character. If the founder is willing to really listen and reconsider his own value judgments, then we have made a promising start.

What would you choose between a founder who reviews his product by interviewing 10 different people and trying to philtre out valuable and constructive criticism, and a founder who is convinced of what he is doing and is afraid to question it because he is convinced that any opinion could lead him off his path?

From the point of view of character, we can also refer to the founder's ability to bring competent people to him when his own qualifications are not sufficient. There are countless situations in which the marketing, financing, sales or even technical areas remain unfilled at the strategic level, and the possible hiring of managers is done haphazardly, without proving effective.

It is also necessary to include the ability to delegate certain decisions to competent people, just as some strategic decisions must remain without compromise.

In the early stages of a business, founders encounter several impasses that require wise decisions. Restructuring shareholders, decisions about strategic direction, control of the company or part of it all require strength of character and determination. Sometimes the good of the company must take precedence at the expense of interpersonal relationships, just as today's decision can make yesterday's decision forgettable.

Last but not least, it is character that determines how committed the founder is to his or her own startup, how motivated he or she is, and how he or she uses all the resources at his or her disposal to achieve success. Potential success largely comes from exclusivity, from taking on all the risk, at least in the early stages of a startup. Sometimes the need for financial security leads founders to develop a product in parallel with their main business. Without a spin-off, without full concentration on a new venture, a founder is not really considered a founder until he devotes himself entirely to his own startup.

The ability to follow a recipe, to follow a sequence of actions, and the ability to choose the right recipe also depends on the strength of character.

I don't know how character is formed, but it seems to come from education, more from home and less academic. In any case, it should be a healthy mix between several types of education, character being the final consequence of their combination. We will continue the series of articles with the element "discipline".

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