One valuable thing i've gained being an early stage founder for ~4 years is — through experiences both joyful and traumatic, and always high stakes — developing a better understanding of the different early stage startup teammate/cofounder/employee archetypes.
Below i've organized my thoughts, primary for myself, but also for anyone else thinking about startup teams.
Framework for Evaluating an Archetype
Here's the framework I came up with:
The Method
We define 7 vectors, and then assign an estimate of where the person stack ranks relative to others. For example, if someone is in the top 5% in technical skillset in the eyes of the beholder, they'd score a 5.
Definitions
work ethic & ambition
"how hard does this guy work and how ambitious are they?" I think these two go hand in hand. I don't think it's possible to have a strong work ethic and low ambition. for example, even the typical trope of the immigrant laundromat owner parent may not seem like there's high ambition there, but that ambition just manifests in wanting the best future for their children. relatedly, if someone has high ambition and is lazy, i would respond that they don't really have high ambition — they just have pipe dreams.
why this matters: scoring high on this means someone has high slope and high ceiling.
technical skillsets today
"if this person were to walk into a movie set mid-shoot, could they contribute to the shooting beyond just running and getting coffee?" pretty self-explanatory, but in the early days, there's less need for soft skillsets. a startup needs to lay bricks - and in the early days, the bricklayers also need to know how to mix cement.
why this matters: scoring high on this means someone is worth their (initial) weight in gold/equity
product domain expertise
"we're building a CRM for insurance companies. has this person worked at an insurance company managing CRMs, or built CRMs before, and if so, for how long?"
why this matters: as a team, you now have someone who has the cheat codes for the parts of the video game that normally everyone has to go through (domain learning). this can help accelerate product development.
product domain passion
"ok so this person may or may not have domain expertise. regardless, how much do they geek out about the domain space?"
why this matters: as a team, you generally want a high ratio of missionaries vs mercenaries. how passionate someone is about the domain space lends itself well caring deeply about the craft and the problem space without burning out.
mike tyson resilience
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face - Mike Tyson" This is one of my favorite quotes about assessing startup teammates, because i've seen people who spike high on other factors but in the face of adversity/resilience they crumbled. it's arguably one of the 3 most important factors here.
why this matters: definitionally, all wildly successful startups have some kind of crucible/existential moment (how gnarly that moment is depends, but the point is every startup goes through this). you generally cannot compromise on having a core set of teammates who can not only absorb the hits but feed off of the energy transfer.
mission vs ego
the unfortunate reality is that a lot of high achieving, high performance people are also incredibly insecure / sensitive. good startup teammates tend to be able to compartmentalize and separate the merits of a discussion about a product or business from their sense of ego/self/standing.
why this matters: it's distracting and incredibly damaging. team spends more time debating basis points vs the actual substance of the product/business/service
truth-seeking ("geek factor")
we like to think of creativity as some inherent hereditary characteristic, but the reality is that all great art and all great science is about imitation. there are no original ideas. all "original" ideas compound from the work of previous generations.
why this matters: for a startup to wildly succeed, there's typically some unlock at some point where their product/service experience is 10x better than their competitors. where do 10x ideas come from? truth-seekers and geeks. they're the only ones willing to spend the time in strange, esoteric, even cross-functional spaces that allow for 10x outlier ideas to come about.
A few notes on my rubric:
- "assigning an estimate" is harder earlier on the less you know the person
- "where the person stack ranks relative to others" is of course in the eyes of the beholder. 2 different people sizing up the same person might have wildly differing rankings if one person has only ever been around excellent teams, and the other person has never been on an excellent team.
- people change. so how someone "scores" today might be very different from how they score a year from now.
- my rubric is just one, personal, subjective rubric. some people might decide it's worth including "charisma" or "like-ability", because "people are nicer to hot people" is a real social phenomenon, and i think that's a fair point.
Examples & Anecdotes of Real Archetypes I've Met
The below are actual people i've collaborated with at past companies. I've of course anonymized their names and perhaps other identifying details.
Archetype #1: The Accredited Prince
On paper: typically has technical experience at brand-recognizable companies. Usually an engineer
Strengths: extremely high initial ROI (which could potentially be long term ROI) in terms of building and shipping product
Weaknesses: often, pedigreed folks who've only worked at large companies have never truly experienced career failure or pain. (what does truly experiencing career feailure or pain mean? hint: if you don't immediately wince when you think of a personal career failure — think Steve Jobs getting ousted at Apple — hate to break it to you, but you've never experienced this). the way this manifests is that they focus in the early days on ego-influenced topics, like:
- "my relative equity to other people" (pre-product, it doesn't actually matter).
- "the size of the team that reports to me"
- "i want to own this" (even if someone wants to own it, in the early days, it suggests a defensive, ego-driven rationale)
- unwillingness to engage in truth-seeking discussions, or becoming emotionally impacted when questioned (comes into discussions with their point of view being the only point of view they were planning to walk away from the discussion with)
- spending money on $500 monthly gym memberships with company or project funds (not used to scrappy startup lifestyle)
- views interpersonal dynamics with teammates not as something to be treated the same as physical health, like gym routines they spend $500 a month on
- weaponizes their technical domain expertise (for now) and leverages it to manipulate/gaslight others on the team
How to navigate: these archetypes may serve their purpose during intense initial build phases, but very quickly self-bow out or get sidelined because they put themselves first before the mission
Archetype #2: The Dependable Workhorse
On paper: typically has technical experience at brand-recognizable companies. Usually an engineer
Strengths: extremely high ROI in terms of building and shipping product. you generally need someone stable and dependable who can just block and tackle
Weaknesses: typically not someone you want at a founder level because they lack the ambition/work ethic to set the pace and tone for the broader team. typically may not lead with the most exceptional ideas.
Archetype #3: The Politician
On paper: typically has low technical skillsets but high EQ to the table. Former consultants & investors are great examples of these archetypes
Strengths: able to run/drive good conversations from team meetings, and can manage investor relationships, marketing, sales. At their best, this archetype is typically a great CEO. At their worst, they fail to contribute to creating a positive team dynamic that sets the team up for long-term culture and success.
Weaknesses: cannot sustainably contribute to product unless they can ramp up technical skillsets incredibly quickly, but can make up for it in other areas of the Business (startups are not just Product. Business involves more than just product.)
Archetype #4: The Optimistic Hustler
On paper: typically has low technical skillsets but high EQ to the table and relentless optimism. Think Jack Ma
Strengths: they'll do anything asked of them as long as it's not too technical. always does it with a positive attitude without complaining.
Weaknesses: sometimes people with this archetype don't possess that extra gear to ramp up technical skillsets or really problem solve effectively, so they're solidly B+ guys/gals and their ceiling is capped.
Patterns I've observed from repeated interactions with common archetypes
- While it's not a perfectly strong correlation, from my experience, there's typically a tradeoff between high technical skillsets and mission vs ego + resilience. if i had to try to explain why i think that tradeoff exists, its likely societal influence: engineers/technical folks tend to get put on a pedestal for their skillset (read: $ market value of engineers), and so they are just playing the "game" within the constructs that society has created for them.
- Conversely, people associated with startups at the early stage with low technical skillets tend to spike higher on resilience / mission vs ego.
The simplest analogy would be: hot chicks/guys can typically get away with more despite terrible personalities than an average looking chick/guy, and less conventionally attractive chicks/guys typically need to compensate more with things like humor.
What spikes matter more when it comes to being a founder?
i think regardless of what archetype someone is, for founders, the 3 characteristics that matter the most are:
- work ethic & ambition (founders need to be raising the bar and pushing the pace to maximize the likelihood of an outsize outcome)
- mission vs ego (the person in the room who least comes across as being personal equity motivated is likely the person who deserves the most equity)
- mike tyson resilience (impossible to know until the punch in the face inevitably happens).