Great founders make legendary companies
We believe the world produces around 300 great founders every year, and any venture investor's job is to find them and do whatever it takes to be on their side. The rest is a distraction.
But what makes a great founder is an elusive question, all the more so at the early stages when there is nothing much to see.
When we got started, people around us were looking at things like product, early commercial traction, or which fancy investor had already committed. We were not convinced - and our journey since then has mostly been one of relentlessly searching for the essence of great founders.
After having deployed €100m+ in 50+ Day One companies such as Pigment or Poolside, we feel we know precisely what kind of founders we are looking for - which allows us to be comfortable investing €2m checks in less than 2 meetings, with companies often not yet incorporated.
Heart, Head, Hand
St Augustin’s 3 libido, Caesar’s veni vidi vici, Christian’s holy trinity, Buddhism’s 3 jewels… Many philosophical landmarks suggest humans are fundamentally driven by their relationship to social, intellectual and physical satisfaction.
We discovered the same applies to founders, and the greatest of them catalyze it into Ambition, Vision and Execution.
Ambition is a way to deal with sociability that makes one willing to move mountains, probably because it seems the best way to be liked and connect with others. These people want money not for what it can buy them, but as a proxy of how well they did, of the impact they had, that deserves to be recognized. This relentless energy is what miracles are made of and is a powerful antidote to cynicism, greatness’ most ferocious enemy.
Vision is both an ability and a taste for manipulating complex systems of concepts. There is obviously a very high correlation with IQ, but by itself it doesn’t fully capture the need for balance between its components. Someone extraordinary with words but terrible with numbers may be a world-class writer, but not a founder.
Execution is having enough discipline (inherited or trained) to voluntarily delay immediate gratifications to ultimately get greater ones. Exaggerated search of physical enjoyment definitely doesn’t help to focus on important things, nor do low tolerance for pain and unmanaged attention disorders.
What about Ringo Starr?
It’s fashionable to say that individuals matter less than groups, and that everyone brings something different and equally valuable to the table.
When asked about the role of cofounders, Steve Jobs said “My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people.”
Without Ringo Starr bringing Execution, John Lennon probably wouldn’t have been able to develop the full potential of his Ambition and Vision. But without Lennon to inspire the team there would have been no Beatles at all.
That’s why we focus primarily on the Lennon of the group and are comfortable investing in extraordinary solo founders, because we know they will end up finding their Ringo.
Great founders craft Unique Insights
Even the greatest founders don’t find success at everything they try. Some do in their early twenties, others later in life, and others never.
That’s because the direction matters. As surprising as it may seem the universe is pretty well organized, and opportunities to change it are not common. It can take a lifetime to identify one, to the price of an homeric fight with mimetic desire.
To determine if an individual may be about to fulfill his destiny and build a generational company, we look for a Unique Insight: that rare moment in a founder’s journey when he has discovered a truly novel glitch in the fabric of the Universe, rebuilds his worldview around it, and sees a way to take advantage of it.
Great founders are made of Ambition, Vision and Execution, and great companies are made of great founders with Unique Insights. This is ours.
