Founders are Made, Not Born: How Founders Become Learning Animals (Part V)
Part V: Scale yourself in phased mindset shifts
This is the “Founders are Made, not Born: How Founders Become Learning Animals” series, based on my Stanford Masters of Education research about founders & learning. Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI. Extensions: Parts 7 and 8.
During our chats, many founders described the difficulty of keeping pace with the growth of their company and identifying what type of leader they needed to grow into. Sometimes the company’s growth outpaced their own. This showed up in struggling to transition between leadership models and time management. Unlike many other professions, there are no clear standards or rubrics to follow.
Instead founders must embrace phased mindset shifts, making adjustments to their mental models at each new phase of the business. In our conversations founders spoke to how executive coaching and calendar-analysis helped them identify the mental model and phase of the business.
NFX founder Pete Flint has written about the mindset shifts founders need to make based on his experience at Trulia and some even have said founders need to “embrace an identity crisis” to prepare for each shift.
Hear from founders themselves about how they grew:
“As a founder it’s hard to separate your learning development from looking at the broad business. The business results serve as a proxy.”
Stacey Jacobs, Founder of TidyMe
In the absence of clear measures or a matrix of founder skills, founders said they thought of their development in stages
“First you need to have the awareness that you suck. Second you need to understand what leadership model is appropriate for the next stage of the company, and figure out how to go embody the model that is needed.”
Anonymous
and…
“If a startup exit is really just a step function of different phases, you as the founder have to figure out how to be the right leader for each stage.”
Sumorwuo Zaza, Founder of NICKL
Founders said that moving effectively from one stage of the company to another means you as the founder need to be working on the most high value projects for the company at that stage
“If I had priced my hours as a founder it would have helped ensure that I worked on the most high value projects at the company.”
Kelly Peeler, Founder of NextGenVest
As the company grows, the margin of error grows
“As the company grows your role as CEO doesn’t change much, but the margin of error and the size of your team grows. Your style changes — that is more learned. Your style might change because you talk to everyone, you have direct reports, you interview everyone who comes in, but then you have to find ways to scale your thinking.”
Anonymous
Identifying what founder excellence looks like is difficult
“Founders have trouble objectively identifying what exceptional companies look like and what is required for their startups to reach that level. To use an analogy, in basketball many high schoolers think they can make it to the NBA, but only a small percentage can actually play on that level, and most don’t understand what it takes. Some firms make founder evaluation matrices and try to define the characteristics of the best founders, but this can vary a great deal depending on the market and sector, for example.”
Nnamdi Okike, 645 Ventures
On the one hand, we have stories of founders like Arianna Huffington, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah, Bill Gates, Sara Blakely and Steve Jobs — these mythical, larger than life figures. We know what they did, but understanding which skills and growth areas most contributed to their success can be difficult to discern and harder replicate. And it might not even matter.
“I think a founder competency matrix of skills before Series B is hard to define because the paths to this scale can be really different. After Series B roughly, individual contributions don’t impact the company as much as their ability to build and motivate a great team.”
Ashu Desai, Founder of Make School
So what is a founder to do? One VC recommends that founders measure whether they’re keeping pace with the growth of the company by doing a calendar analysis
“As companies scale, founders should start assessing how they spend their time by reviewing their calendars. It’s one of the best indicators of personal growth. Ask yourself: Do you have more time to focus on strategy and growth as your company grows? Are you spending time having strategic or high value meetings? Are you in control of your time? As companies scale, many founders/CEOs feel they are constantly working, managing 1:1s, putting out small fires and don’t have time to think. I’ve noticed that founders who do regular calendar reviews tend to build their organization in a way that best preserves their time.”
Katherine Boyle, VC at General Catalyst
To summarize, founders use the following tips to navigate growth goals and keep pace with the changes in their company:
- Acknowledge current skills are not always enough for the next phase
- Discover what leadership model is needed for the next phase
- Identify if the stage your company is at has changed
- Measure whether you’re keeping pace with what the company needs through calendar analysis
Founders, I’d love to hear any more insights about how you recognized what was needed to keep pace with the growth of your company as you became the leader you are today. Reach out anytime at mbent@lsvp.com
