As applications are coming in for the Founder Institute in Seattle, it is clear we’ve caused some people to ask themselves: Is now the time to found a company? I believe the right time is when your passion feels like it is on fire — not just your passion for your idea, because your idea will morph over time — you need to have passion to be a founder.
Steve Blank asks a lot of the right questions in his blog post: Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime. Excerpted from his post:
“When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves:
Are you comfortable with:
- Chaos – startups are disorganized
- Uncertainty – startups never go per plan
Are you:
- Resilient – at times you will fail – badly. How quickly will you recover?
- Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. Can you recognize and capitalize on them?
- Creative / Pattern Recognition – can you think “out of the box?” Or if not, can you recognize patterns others miss?
- Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? 24/7?
- Tenacious – can you keep going when everyone else gives up? Can you keep giving 200% despite all the naysayers who don’t believe in your idea?
- Articulate – can you create a reality distortion field and have others see and share your vision and passion?
And I remind them that they should be bringing some type of domain expertise (technical or business) to the table.
This is the minimum feature set for founders.”
The whole post is here and is absolutely worth the read. Are you ready?
