Start a Company
3 signs you may make a great startup founder
What do lemonade, rugby and weirdos have to do with success in entrepreneurship?
Well, here are 3 observations that invariably correlate with someone meeting our investment criteria at DQ…
- Lemonade stalls. A high proportion of our founders tried to start a business when they were younger. Maybe they didn’t succeed, but they put themselves out there. They weren’t afraid to fail.
- Bats and balls. Sportspeople know so much that applies to entrepreneurship:
- Commitment
- Responsibility and reliability (turning up)
- Resilience (bouncing back from loss / being dropped)
- Self-awareness (strengths and weaknesses)
- Team play (working well with others under pressure)
- Self-belief (fighters not victims)
- Misfits. Every single one of our founders came from a corporate background (we exclusively help experienced professionals transition from employee to successful entrepreneur). But most of them never truly fit. They…
- Never considered themselves “corporate”
- Accepted challenges others shied away from
- Found ways to gain autonomy
- Often worked overseas
- Never felt settled
If you’re the kind of person who keeps their head down and wants a quiet life, you probably know already you’re no founder. But for everyone else, don’t let anyone tell you you’re not suited to entrepreneurship because if you were, you’d have done it already. That’s utter crap.
