Charlie Songhurst

And that's more true outside of the US culture than it is in the US.

It's particularly true with Europeans.

And so a lot of it is trying to get people to actually say what they truly believe, as opposed to say what they think they should say.

All of the above.

The founder one is fascinating because you actually end up going down different lines and helping them, depending on whether they answer the power and the money.

Founders that answer with power tend to need help more on managing their startup capital efficiently.

They tend to be the ones that spend more.

They tend to be the ones that overexpand.

They're often too aggressive.

Conversely, the ones that answer money tend to be very capital efficient, but often slightly too cautious, slightly underaggressive, sometimes not willing enough to stamp their authority on the company and make it the culture that it needs to be to be successful.

I think what you're really looking for is founder market fit.

I think there's a sort of mistaken concept that there's this platonic ideal of an entrepreneur.

And I think maybe there's two very basic things.

There's energy and there's sort of cognitive ability.

But after that, you're really looking for fit.

So if you take the sort of prototypical consumer founder, they tend to have more empathy for how people behave.

Whereas if you take the classic enterprise founder, they tend to be more national because in some ways you can just go and ask your customers what features do you want and go build them.

And so you go down those different lines.

And I think there's a lot of fallacy in that sort of platonic ideal.

What you're actually looking for is someone who's a good fit for a business.