You Began Building Your Startup Years Ago (You Just Didn’t Know It)

We spend a lot of time at Promus Ventures getting to know the founders and their background. I’ve written about great founders here and here and here to name a few. We talk a lot about Founder-Market fit, the how and why of each person working at a startup.

Founders don’t realize it, but they started to build their startup many years ago. It began with their childhood passions and games, the endless time they spent on pouring over sports box scores or building legos or playing music. It was cultivated by a curious mind that loved to read and study about new ideas.

The guts for a founder to launch is directly correlated with the dozens of family members, spouses, friends, teachers, mentors who, in one way or another, strengthened a founder’s character and determination to change the world for good. The sum total of one’s choices throughout his or her life, combined with strong character and a moral compass, produces the byproduct of every startup.

Startups are all about the people. Period. Teams provide motivation and reason behind why everyone gets up each day and goes to work. Founders press forward with a vision of what’s ahead and what the team should be building. The best startups structure diversity of opinion and background so a variety of viewpoints can push back on homogeneous thinking. Software code doesn’t do this — only talented individuals pushing for a solution to a problem that has annoyed and vexed them for years.

You can’t just pick up a reserve of resiliency in one day. When the chips are down, the product is going nowhere, customers are all saying “no,” morale is low and everyone is tired, elite founders and teams draw upon their passion to forge ahead. This can only be shaped by a myriad of challenges someone has faced earlier in his or her life.

A lifetime of stories is what is important outside of the pitch desk across the table in due diligence. You can be 20 or 50 years old, but character is what matters in the end. This fortitude is only refined by a collection of experiences where one either chose to go up and over the mountain or instead decided it was just too hard to traverse. Be the one that perseveres to the top — the view is much better up there.