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What our members have to say...
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"DONE DEAL - We were looking for an Investor to help launch an online trading room. What we got was even 100 times better. We found a team of individuals willing to partner with us and who are well known highly specialised in the internet marketing and management of FX products. We have just launched our product today and it’s looking very promising! I can't thanks AIN enough for coming through, and I wouldn't hesitate coming back in the future."
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Nelson Aseka - www.simplyforex.co.ke |
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9 Traits of Great Entrepreneurs
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A large part of my job involves meeting entrepreneurs, which I love. I meet with a staggering number of them each week. Some you can tell are lemons after five minutes, but a special few make my day (the best part of my day). I recently wondered whether there were any common traits amongst those entrepreneurs who were great.
The wonderful thing about venture investing is that it is a science where your experience is cumulative. Similar to Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, if you’ve seen 10,000 business plans and met with 10,000 entrepreneurs, you develop pattern recognition – and it gets better the older you get, like a well-aged wine.
The great VCs – I’d name Michael Moritz and Don Valentine here; both of whom I have met personally, spoken with at length, and admire greatly (you can read more in The Way Of The VC) – all have this perceptible quality. It’s what industry veterans call ‘the smell.’
Some of the filters I have developed for assessing entrepreneurs:
1. Thoughtful listening. Does s/he watch customers and how they behave? What is the input-output ratio?
2. Do they iterate rapidly?
3. Are they good at mental arithmetic?
4. Do they validate the user-base of the product? i.e. measure high-quality repeat users or the net promoter score?
5. Do they measure figure metrics which reflect both the quality of the business and factors which they can influence?
6. Is s/he able to convey a complex business in very simple terms? (The test is to explain it to your mom and see whether she understands. If she can’t understand it, it is too complicated.)
7. Would they ‘throw a turd in the punch bowl’ and disrupt the industry?
8. Can s/he imagine doing anything with his/her life other than the chosen service or product? (Correct answer is no)
9. Do they refer to a ‘museum of mistakes’ and avoid them?
10. There is one last factor which I’m hesitant to put because there are numerous counterexamples – it’s that, by and large, great entrepreneurs are also great human beings. You leave a meeting with them feeling that they are nice individuals, and often like to help them. Some have this quality in them naturally.
To give one real-world example… We work with one brilliant entrepreneur who has great engineering and product skills. He’s extremely sociable, does business development naturally, and all his staff love him. Most importantly, he is very thoughtful and a great listener. (Most entrepreneurs talk too much and the signal-to-noise ratio is low). Not surprisingly, the company is preparing for a high profile exit. We wish we could clone more folks like him.
There are more key attributes, of course. Although these are the main traits which I think personally are more important. Feel free to add on in the comments.
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