The Mindset Of The Startup Founders

Idea is powerful but not until it becomes actionable and get the validation by real user.

We are living in the era where the word impossible seems to be challenged by young dare-devils. For them every problem seems to be like an opportunity to make an impact. They are not limited by their thoughts, they want to fight, they want to try, failures are no more stopping them, they have all the courage to stand up and face and grow up.

That is the spirit which is shaping the current world of today, fostering new energy and giving birth to new kind of innovation. I have been fortunate enough to meet many startup founders and also being a startup founder myself, this topic very close to my heart. It very relevant in the current dynamics to understand what make this brave-hearts to take the up the challenges to start on their own, risking all their comfort.

So let’s get started to get into the mids of startup founders.

Here are my top 3 learning while being a part of this startup ecosystem.

1. They Are Absolutely Fearless: They Win By Taking Decisive Actions.

One common trait of a successful startup founder is that they radiate absolute fearlessness in their thought process.So they do things and win over their fear.

With this mindset they are always ready to learn what has not been explored and try to make sense out of every possible action they perform. They are absolutely detached from the outcome when they attempt the impossible and in the process they lit up all the possibility to learn and discover new things.

This ability to lead fearlessly and doing things with an attitude to learn makes them standout in the league.

2. They Are Customer Obsessed By Nature: They Listen Them A Lot

Idea really can change life of millions but not every idea is destined to be so.

The Idea needs to be a real game changer and that needs an absolute understanding of customers who are going to use your product. This one urge to know audience of their product Idea , to understand the user behaviour , to actually map what are the real problem statement which needs to be solved through any product, drives the founders the most.

They simply reject the idea of assuming things & working on it. They first capture the real data, real use case and then plan the achievable milestone to quickly validate their Idea through quick POC. They want to be working closely with their end user, so at every stage of product development they are out in the market spending good enough time interacting with their real users/customers.

They believe in continuous customer engagement to improve upon their product and invest heavily to release the improved version out in the market to validate fast.

3. They Have An Amazing Listening Skills: They Respect Everyones Opinion

Right from our birth we learned stuffs by listening first, reading has always been a secondary way of learning things.

Startup founders are blessed with this key skill of being a focussed listener. Listening doesn’t comes easily it require judgement free attention span which is hard to come-by. Founders are aware of this one fact that,

“They don’t know everything ”.

This knowledge is a goldmine and I feel everyone should understand and practice this in their life if they really want to know.

With this knowledge they try to listen to their customers, stakeholders, team members and every possible channels to gain insights.

They acquire knowledge by networking with doers and while they do so they listen in absolute state of surrender.

Summary:

The journey from an Idea to having millions of customers is a long term game and the startup founders understands this game very honestly. So they remain invested in improving the process to learn and unlearn things while they are trying to build the team of doers.

They are self aware of their capabilities and accept their limitation. With this awareness they collaborate with right set of people with whom s/he shares their vision. They are quick learners and failures for them becomes a real driving force to move forward. They are open to changes and so they stay invested in making the required change in the process to adapt to the changing market dynamics.

One of the critical skill they radiate while they build their startup is to trust data a lot. The data from the real users works like a oil for them to make a crucial decision. They are absolutely in love with numbers.

They are Dataholic.

I would like to end this piece with one food for thought for all founders who have grown to a mid-level startup and now looking to scale and disrupt the market in which they are.

“Your journey is the whole sum of all those small/long journey of your co-founders and team members, so how long it will go, will largely deicide the success and failure of your long term vision. Every story will shape your journey and while you experience those do share them and value them. At the end that is all you will carry and will matter. ”

Thanks for reading all along with me and sharing my journey of writing this part of the story.

Thanks A Lot…

The Mindset Of The Startup Founders was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.