Entrepreneurial Leadership
Two new pieces of work lead me to think I can [finally] spot real leadership
I have to report immediately that I may have found the Fountain of Eternal Entrepreneurship, after a search that started more than 45 years ago, when I started writing about it as a young nincompoop in 1987 at the age 23. Two recent events have combined to show the way to this revelation.
First, I read an article about a book, which I’ve ordered but not read yet: “Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups” by Ali Tamaseb, himself a venture capitalist. The news: For the first time in my long life an individual has accumulated enough data over enough time on founders of companies to provide a reasonably conclusive insight about founders, to wit: “"The biggest signal I observed in the data is that a bunch of things don't matter, like age and university and being technical and this kind of stuff," Tamaseb said. "What matters is having a history of having generated value, even if that value was small."
Wow! 45 years later.... Back Before Big Data, the only statistical analysis I had found, in the 1980s, that seemed to be valid is that a professor (at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth) concluded that the single largest correlation in the data than then existed was that about 3-40% of company founders started their company because they had been fired or terminated from their last job. This made perfect sense to me. Indeed, it happened to me in 1985, when I was fired from my job as editor of InfoWorld! (I started a business called Industry Publishing, which published P.C. Letter (newsletters: another topic) and produced conferences called Agenda and Demo and a little known directory called “The Social Register of The Personal Computer Industry”.
That was the insight I lived by for more than 45 years: founders are a random lot defined commonly somewhat by having been fired at some point — not a great basis on which to base investment decisions after I became a venture investor in 1996… (c.f. I’m not on the Forbes Midas list!) And there have been plenty of theories promulgated over those decades about what defines the best founders: a sense of urgency; a great team; a rising market; dedication to a mission. None of these factors, including the terminated factor, were reliable in predicting the eventual success of both the founder and their company.
Second, my youngest brother by 14 years, recently cited one of his sources for how he is inspired to run his company, The Receptionist, in his quarterly report to his investors. “We spent a lot of time focusing on and beginning to implement the philosophies of Simon Sinek's The Infinite Game. Much like Traction has shaped how we run The Receptionist, the influence of Simon Sinek's theories is going to take this company to the next level. If you haven't watched it already, I highly recommend checking out this quick video: ‘Simon Sinek Explains What Almost Every Leader Gets Wrong.’ " I agree; watch it; even if you have to take a break from this article.
[You can see that my brother is a thoughtful individual, who is trying to make sense of this thing called entrepeneurship. He’s doing a pretty damn good job in that regard, growing his company by 23% YOY during the pandemic and learning how to re-define his business, since it has been based on an application for checking visitors into office buildings, something that’s not happening quite as much as it was.]
Me? I think that, as often happens to me, I was just gifted two insights from two independent sources in the space of one week that, combined, make a meaningful revelation. Instead of looking for people who have been fired, look for people who have been successful, even if on a small scale (particularly if the success resulted from being fired!). Then look for the qualities that Sinek outlines: leaders who play the infinite game to keep playing rather than to win (and happen to be willing to sell shares in their company to me to get the money to do that!)
It’s about time that I figured this out. I turn 70 next year, and I know I only have 15-20 years to be able to practice my profession: How much better can I do the next 15 than the last 25 with this sort of dynamic insight?