As someone who has spent the last seventeen years working with startup founders, I’ve learned a few lessons:
It’s good to be optimistic in the general and sceptical in the specific. It’s very dangerous to be pessimistic in the general and optimistic in the specific.
Happiness is that feeling you get right before you need more happiness.
Don’t give up but wipe the slate clean. If it doesn’t work the first time, don’t be afraid to scrap it and try again.
While having conversations with founders, one thing that I spend a significant amount of time thinking about is their mindset. Given that I work almost exclusively with startups that are still seeking product-market fit, a founder’s mindset has become the single most important thing that I evaluate. In my opinion, mindset has the most significant influence in whether a founder finds success or not. Let me elaborate.
Carol Dweck, an American psychologist, outlined two types of mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Quite simply, people with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence is static, whereas people with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be developed. It seems like a simple delineation, but the difference has a major impact in early-stage startups.
Taking Dweck’s definitions, a growth mindset leads to a desire to learn, embrace challenge, persist in the setbacks, see efforts as a path to mastery, learn from criticism, and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. It fuels self-belief. This leads to higher levels of achievement.
From the other perspective, a fixed mindset leads to behaviour that avoids challenges, give up easily, see effort as fruitless, and ignore useful negative feedback. This leads an individual to plateau early and achieve less than their full potential. This undermines self-belief, and of course, the likelihood of success.
And as you could imagine, everyone believes that they have a growth mindset. So, you may be asking, what do you look for? It is simple. I look for proof that someone got off of a paved path with self-belief to be curious to discover more and learn from that. Most people with a fixed mindset will not divert and stay within their existing framework for fear of taking too much risk and being uncomfortable.
I’m very much into working with adventurous founders, I want to know they have the courage and conviction to pursue a different path and are open minded to learning and pivoting if needed. This is the founder mindset that for me shapes success, initiating, adapting, learning, and coming out ahead. If this pattern continues it is likely that they will find a way to be successful in the future.
Being a startup founder is one of the most demanding things you will do in your life. The ups and downs can be dramatic, and the emotions can test the resolve of even the most confident entrepreneur. Whilst we often think the success of a startup is down to innovation, I think it’s as much to do with founder’s growth mindset and the self-belief this creates.
Self-belief reflects a person's overall emotional evaluation of their own worth, primarily two things: respecting yourself and feeling capable. As fully invested – emotion, energy, time, and cash - into your venture, you become battle hardened and your determination and resilience are renewed. Your startup is part of your personal identity now, and your commitment to it a measure of your personal success is a high driver.
Frustration, performance anxiety, and doubting yourself are all emotions you’re likely to experience in your founder role and can combine into a maelstrom to undermine your self-esteem. We’ve all had those quiet moments when we reflect, and it all unravels. Don’t get me wrong, there are a raft of positive experiences along the way too, but be realistic, a startup is hard and there are no shortage of unknowns, unexpected challenges, and risks. But let the chips fall, simply roll your sleeves up, go again, do the hard stuff.
As long as you’re honest with yourself and deal with it head-on, there’s nothing to fear from self-doubt. It’s actually a good mechanism for keeping you on the right track. Never be bullied into silence. Accept no one's definition of your startup life but define yourself. Stay consciously aware of the real conditions you are operating in, accepting of yourself, take responsibility for yourself, assert yourself, have a sense of purpose, be rigorously honest, then self-belief is the natural result. Make it matter where it matters most, inside.
There’s a depth of research on the defining characteristics of entrepreneurs, but for me as I said at the outset, the common trait that I’ve come to recognise in successful start-up founders is mindset driving self-belief. They all share an overwhelming positive outlook even when facing daunting challenges that appear to have the bleakest of odds for success. I’ve notice there are a set of common beliefs that they share:
Belief in self: First and foremost, founders believe in themselves, their abilities, and their personal strengths. They believe they can make great things happen. I’ve never met a successful entrepreneur with low self-esteem. Self-belief is vital, how many things have you not done or tried because you lacked belief in yourself? As Eleanor Roosevelt deftly put it: Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Belief in beating the odds: We have to be open minded, with no sense of what we cannot do. But bit-by-bit, life starts to teach you to limit yourself. Children don’t learn to limit their own horizons, so why does it happen? Successful starters don’t hope they can beat the odds, they believe wholeheartedly that they will. There is no second-guessing. As they say, those who say they can and those that say they can’t are both right. If you don’t believe you can beat the odds, chances are you won’t.
Belief in dealing with the inner negative voice: That little negative inner voice. Whose voice is it really? It’s often a collection of lots of different voices from times and people from your past that causes self-belief to wane. One thing's for sure, that self-critical voice shouldn't be yours. It may masquerade as belonging to you, but it doesn't really. One of the first steps is to re-examine and discard many of the limiting ideas you have about yourself, ideas that you've somehow collected along the way. Get rid of the baggage!
Belief in flipping a weakness into strength: Dumbo, the well known cartoon character, was humiliated by his outsize ears. He hated them. But over time, he came to use them, changing his attitude. Like Dumbo, if we just focus on what is not right about ourselves rather than what is, we miss opportunities. Don't assume there's nothing to improve, but just focusing on perceived weaknesses or giving fair focus toward our strengths gets us nowhere. Know that the positive flipside of a weakness, in the right context, can be put to good use.
Belief in intuition: Most entrepreneurs rely on gut feelings to make decisions than they do on analysis. Most people wait for the right opportunity to present itself, but the true growth mindset founder is always on the lookout for another new opportunity. It is often just a matter of perspective. There is the famous story about the shoe company who send an employee to Africa to ascertain if there is a market for their shoes. The representative reports back, There is no shoe market here. These people don’t even wear shoes. The founder, on hearing this news, exclaims, This is wonderful. No one has any shoes yet. What a huge opportunity!
Belief in perseverance: This is a big mindset attribute. The obstacles that cause many to quit are minor setbacks for the growth mindset founders. Winners persist. It is often that simple difference in self-belief that separates the successful person from the frustrated failure - to quote Calvin Coolidge, Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence; talent will not, nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent; genius will not, unrewarded genius is almost a proverb; education will not, the world is full of educated derelicts; persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Belief in vision: For most of the successful starters I’ve met and researched, their vision is always bigger than just the money: Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, said the main motivation of his life was to be a good ancestor. Starters believe their start-ups can make a real difference, and those that set out to leave their mark on the world usually do. It’s self-belief that determines your direction and velocity.
Summary
Modern startup culture whispers subliminally into our ears. Listen closely, you hear it everywhere. Be an entrepreneur. Be a founder. Start your own venture. Work for yourself. Real success comes to people who seize their own destiny and do it themselves. If you want a shot at success, you must be out on your own.
The whispers might sound innocuous. But underneath inspiration lies a dark and alarming set of justifications. It’s really tough. This fixation on going it alone and the cult of the hustle, has become so pervasive that we can overlook just how thoroughly it has saturated our entire business culture.
Reality, of course, is far messier than urban myth. Sometimes working for yourself turns out great, discovering a certain freedom, but many fail. What interests me is how our conception of work has became so individualised and how so many people have become convinced that the path to success lay in working for themselves. The puzzle of is how this vast and disparate community of business owners came to embody a cultural ideal, and how that ideal came to dominate our national conversation about economic life.
But it's not for everyone. I can see it after a fifteen-minute conversation with a founder, their mindset, self-belief, and balanced thinking of realistic optimism. Self-belief means being yourself, everyone else is already taken. Personally, I find it easier to believe than to doubt. You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes, and with self-belief, steer yourself any direction you choose. Dr Seuss.
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