When I watch Masterchef on TV, I (a person who once tried to use Lurpak in a Béarnaise) often think ‘yeah, I could make that’. But, during the six years I’ve been reporting on startups I’ve never thought ‘yeah, I could be a founder’.
Maybe it’s because I don’t move fast and break things, I move slowly and take care of my possessions. Maybe it’s because I don’t own a gilet. Or chinos. Maybe it’s because I’m not a man named Tom, or Felix. Or because I brutally found out my best idea so far (the scootcase — half scooter, half suitcase) had already been launched.
Whatever the reason, I confronted it all when EQT, the investment company behind Europe’s largest early-stage startup fund, sent me its new research. Built on data from 5k psychometric profiles and the commercial results of the most successful founders of the past five years in its portfolio, EQT reckons it’s built a predictive framework to assess founder readiness with the “unprecedented accuracy” of 99%.
According to the research, which was validated by Oxford University Behavioural Psychology team, the six traits of successful founders are: lightening focus, resilience alchemy, magnetic leadership, fearless drive, progressive explorer and transparent self-awareness. (The unlisted seventh trait presumably being the ability to withstand buzzwords.)
From the data analysis, EQT says only 85 in a million people will be naturally high scoring across all six.
This may offer some insight into why there are so many terrible startups, but I’ve got to say I’ve always had the inkling that I’m one in a million. 85 in a million should be easy. Helpfully, EQT launched a three-minute free “Founder Test” to accompany its research and immediately humble me.
The questions were reminiscent of a Buzzfeed quiz that discovers whether your spirit animal is a bat or a unicorn. Then again, so do all self-report psychometric tests. The instructions at the start also said not to overthink your questions, so naturally I overthought all my answers.
I also thought — for longer than three minutes — about the systematic barriers that stand in the way of me being a founder. My spirit CEO could have the lightning focus of Anne Boden and magnetic leadership of Daniel Ek, but I would still be a woman with limited savings to play with. How much of being a successful founder is based on your personality and sensibilities and how much is based on things like your gender and proximity to angel investors with deep pockets and an enthusiasm for half baked ideas like a half scooter, half suitcase?
Yet EQT, which has backed the likes of Vinted, Einride and Wolt, says it wants to use this framework to better assess founders’ potential, “to improve selection and therefore increase success rate.” It also points out that a person can have all six traits regardless of gender, race, age or nationality.
Me? Well, in a result that shook me to the core but then made sense, I share “several important characteristics with top founders, yet clear differences remain”. My strongest founder trait? Fearless drive. My weakness? Focused cognition (which almost too aptly describes the ponder above).
Magnetic leadership? Average. Resilience alchemy? Above average. Transparent self awareness? Not quite 85 in a million, but the upper end of average.
If I wanted to dig in, EQT has written a report which features tips on how to hone these skills and embark on self coaching. But that probably requires a bit too much focused cognition for me.
#successful #founder #test