7 Hidden Characteristics Every Successful Startup Founder Shares

I always thought that some people were just naturally wired to be entrepreneurs, and others weren’t.

That every great founder or inventor of some amazing idea was just somebody who was built differently.

Far out of my league.

I instantly counted myself out as one of those people, assuming I’d never have what it takes to compete at that kind of level.

Years went by without me thinking more about that mentality.

I found myself graduating college, getting myself a traditional 9-5 job, but sitting at my desk every day with the constant idea in my mind of wanting to start a business of my own.

For years I’d put myself completely out of contention of even thinking of starting my own business, thinking that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t possess the qualities necessary to make something work.

But I asked myself - what exactly are these qualities of a founder that makes them so successful?

Surely if certain people were just “wired” to be successful entrepreneurs, there were a set of similarities in the characteristics they embodied, right?

I wondered that if I was able to study numerous famous founders from history and boil those similar qualities down to a refined list of recurring themes, perhaps I’d be able to compare myself against those, and see whether I really did align with them, or not.

The turning point that actually made me take the time to study this idea properly was a podcast I was listening to from David Senra, of Founders Podcast.

He spoke about how Elon Musk had once been asked how he managed to start companies when he was so young.

How did he learn everything he knew about business? Did he read a lot of business books, or what?

Elon replied saying that he didn’t read many general business books at all.

He did say, however, that he found biographies and autobiographies incredibly insightful, and that he’d learnt a significant amount of what he knows today from those biographies.

That sparked a massive realisation for me.

1. If Elon found insight from the biographies of other successful people before him, there must be some genuine value in studying the characteristics of successful people.
2. It meant that Elon wasn’t completely “naturally gifted”, and that through acquiring external knowledge, he was able to move his trajectory closer toward success.

Finally, I could see some hint of light.

Maybe I was able to alter the trajectory of my life.

Perhaps I could learn and acquire knowledge that would help me become a successful founder of a business.

Maybe I could grow into somebody who embodies the characteristics of these successful founders throughout history.

So that settled it.

I began studying the lives and success stories of many successful founders, leaders and entrepreneurs throughout history.

I did the research, and started breaking down the lives and journeys of successful people of history.

In the process, I uncovered a set of common traits that seemed to be shared among many of them.

Let me explain what I found.

Before I get to them, I need to warn you that reading them alone isn’t going to help at all.

Without the right mindset, you’re going to miss the value that you can add to your life by learning them.

How To Get The Most Value Out Of Studying Characteristics Of Successful Founders

If you just scroll through and skim-read each of these recurring traits I’ve identified below, I guarantee you; you’re going to get nothing from them.

You’re going to read them.

You’ll feel like you’re reading something productive.

You’ll feel good about it.

But it is going to make absolutely zero difference to your daily life, and how you go about living the rest of your day.

If you want to actually get the most out of the content below, please, keep the following in mind before you read it:

1) Compare Your Current Self To Them

“Comparison is the thief of joy”

Yes, I get it. We’ve heard it all before.

Listen, sometimes joy and contentment with where you’re at isn’t the most productive way to guarantee a successful, happy future.

I mentioned this in my last article on “Reps & Momentum”.

There’s a difference between what your human desires want, and what’s good for you in the long term.

Comparison may be the thief of joy, but it may also tell you exactly what you’re doing wrong in your life right now.

By comparing yourself to people more successful than you and making appropriate changes, you’re one step closer toward fixing it up.

As you read through the qualities that are recurringly found in successful people throughout history below, compare your current self, your current actions, your current mindset with theirs.

Are there actions you do each day that go against the characteristics they embody?

Are there mindsets you have that are shutting you down and preventing you from embodying these traits yourself?

Be serious with yourself. Ruthlessly look at the way you live right now.

The breakthrough in your life may be a result of you making the few changes necessary in order to align with these characteristics more.

2) Act It Into Existence

For many of the habits and characteristics that great founders embody, you’ll find yourself clearly realising “wow okay I don’t have that at all”.

Don’t overthink it. Every skill is learnable.

With effort, you can reshape any part of yourself.

Whenever you find a personality trait or skill that you’re lacking, the most effective way to make it yours is to embody it.

Act as if you already have it.

"Your brain and nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience." - Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics)

When you start acting like the person you want to become, your mind begins to accept this new identity, making it easier to take actions aligned with success.

Notice how everything above comes as a result of action?

The action of acting it into existence.

Without action, we’d only be having thoughts. We’d just be reading text and storing it up without ever putting it to use.

"Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action... confidence accumulates through hard work, success, and by confronting fear." - Katty Kay & Claire Shipman (The Confidence Code)

Confidence is the catalyst that converts thoughts into actions.

Confidence can be increased by undeniably building up proof for yourself that you are the valuable person you say you are.

In other words:

• Start making actions in your life that align with what a valuable person would do (even if you feel like you’re faking it)
• This builds up a repertoire of undeniable proof in your mind that you actually are valuable
• Seeing this and realising you are valuable increases your confidence in yourself
• Increased confidence acts as a positive feedback loop, encouraging you to continue getting better, embodying more positive characteristics, and taking more action.

3) Learn From Where The Greats Stumbled

You have no excuse for making a mistake that somebody in the past has already made.

Especially if they explicitly recorded it, and exactly how they overcame it.

Every successful individual you know would have made errors along their journey.

The strategies they used for overcoming challenges are right there for us to read.

Instead of wasting time falling for the same traps and reinventing wheels that have already been created, it’s our responsibility to note these down and learn from them.

Identify pitfalls and weaknesses these great individuals had, and make corrections in your own life to avoid them.

Look at the processes and strategies they put in place to correct the mistakes they made originally and implement them yourself.

Keeping each of these ideas in mind, let's break down the common qualities that I managed to find in successful founders.

7 Characteristics of Successful Startup Founders

1) Determination

It’s tempting to believe that intelligence is the strongest predictor of a successful founder. Yet time after time, history proves that relentless determination beats intellect when it comes to turning a vision into reality.

No matter how smart you are, you're going to hit a lot of obstacles. A great founder is someone who is able to remain resilient in these situations. You have to be the one who holds the vision steady, even when everyone else doubts it.

Thomas Edison tested over 10,000 prototypes before inventing the lightbulb. Elon almost lost Tesla and SpaceX multiple times, but persevered through and found success.

Every overnight success is really the product of years of unseen unrelenting determination.

2) Polymathists

Every successful founder masters the art of wearing multiple hats.

No one who left a traditional job and built something great ever fit neatly under a single label.

There’s never a “software engineer” or a “product manager” alone who successfully started a business.

It’s almost always someone undeniably skillful and experienced across multiple domains – often including skills outside of their traditional career path. They were a jack of all trades – or at least thought of themselves as one.

You have to break free from the limitations of being labelled by a rigid job title. From a mindset that defaults to thinking you could never learn something or become proficient in a new area.

Stay adaptable. Maintain a student mentality. Be someone who is willing to pick up and learn anything at any point along the way if necessary for achieving the goal.

3) Proficiency in Articulating Thoughts

Think about the best entrepreneurs in the world.

Jeff Bezos’ shareholder letters, Warren Buffett’s memos, Sam Altman’s essays. Regardless of the industry, one pivotal skill stands out – the ability to articulate their vision to others.

Whether through persuasive writing, inspiring people through speaking, or a captivating storytelling ability, every successful founder you study will have some variation of that ability.

They know how to take their vision, and craft it into a compelling narrative that gets people rallying behind it.

4) Highly Intentional Relationships

All great founders throughout time have been highly selective with the network of people they surround themselves with.

A commonality I was able to identify was that great startups were rarely founded by an individual. Most large success stories tended to be two or three highly ambitious people who teamed up to work toward an aligned vision. They were extremely selective about their partners – knowing that startups push teams to their limits and ultimately break at their weakest point.

Another technique I noticed was that they would deliberately surround themselves with top-tier mentors and advisors for wise counsel. Instead of relying purely on their own knowledge, and struggling through trial and error, they reached out to those who had done it successfully before them.

Behind every successful founder is a carefully cultivated network of people who helped them get there.

5) It Wasn’t Their First Rodeo

Almost every great entrepreneur in history had some form of past failures or unsuccessful ventures.

Previous attempts at building businesses or pursuing ideas that had crashed and burned. No matter how many times they failed, they refused to stay down – no matter how long their list of failures grew. They didn’t take no for an answer. They weren’t going to submit to the system. To spend the remainder of their days working for somebody else’s dream.

Another recurring theme among these greats was that they’d put relentless work in behind the scenes for years, long before they had anything to their name or saw any form of success. I got the sense that it was portraying the same idea over and over:

They were all already doing the exact actions which made them successful - before they reached the success themselves. They already had the work ethic. They already had the vision, the determination, the network of people around them to help them in the pursuit of their goals.

They were already acting as if they were successful, they were just waiting for time to catch up with them.

6) Brutal Honesty & Self-Awareness

There isn’t a single successful founder who wasn’t completely blunt with themselves, and the position of their business at any given time throughout their journey.

A common attribute among them was that they had a high sense of self-awareness, and an ability to see the shortcomings in themselves and their pursuits. They knew that sugarcoating their weaknesses or ignoring their business’s failures did nothing for the ultimate benefit of their long-term success. They were brutally honest with themselves about what needed to change and took immediate action.

Instead of surrounding themselves with an echo chamber of encouragement, they purposefully established a network of advisors who could challenge them with honest, unfiltered feedback and constructive criticism.

They were relentless in preventing personal bias or emotions from affecting their actions and decisions.

7) Naughtiness

Prominent founders aren’t afraid to go against the grain.

They have the common characteristic that they are completely unafraid to go against the status quo.

It’s almost as if they have a rebellious gleam in their eye at the way in which they perceive the world. They aren’t fooled into simply just accepting the widely held beliefs of the people around them. They question everything. Never blindly accepting the beliefs of those around them. Just because an idea is widely accepted doesn’t mean it’s correct.

Great founders challenge conventional wisdom.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw

The best founders don’t just accept the way things are – they rewrite them.

–

You are not bound by your starting point.

Any skill or mindset can be developed with effort and intention.

At their core, every successful person of any endeavour throughout history was fueled by an unstoppable determination.

A curiosity that nobody would dim.

Maintain that, and you have fuel for your fire.

This is the crux of everything else.

Do not let the light go out. Do not go gentle into the goodnight.

With the motivation to do the job, all you need to do is get to work on the things you have direct control over.

• Become a generalised specialist. A polymathist. Learn all the skills.
• Become proficient in verbalising and conveying your thoughts to others, so that you can build a team relentlessly pursuing the same vision.
• Surround yourself with high-value individuals. Ambitious, hard working, straight to the point people who are also in the pursuit of greatness.
• Act your success into existence. Be taking the same actions and implementing the same routines as somebody who has already found substantial success.
• Be unabashedly honest with yourself, and rigorously take any action necessary to iterate on shortcomings.
• Never lose the gleam in your eye. Question everything. Don’t be afraid to go against the grain.

The only limitation is your own mind.

If you can persuade yourself to genuinely believe you can succeed, you cannot fail.

Traits can be built. Weaknesses can be eliminated. It’s not about waiting to feel ready—it’s about acting the part until you become it.

Don’t just read this without taking action.

Ruthlessly look at your current self.

What actions could you take right now that would align you closer with the characteristics of successful people throughout time?

- Cole

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