Successful founders don't share a personality type, but they do share intense conviction that their company must succeed. This belief typically develops after early product signals or traction, then grows into a gravitational force that pulls employees and investors along.
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I don't think there's a personality type that people should copy and be like, I need to be like this person. You know, I need to be like Steve Jobs. I need to be like Elon. You know, I don't really believe in that because there's just so much variation. Like, Tony from Door Dash is so different. Patrick is a different kind of person. Ryan from Flexport, like, these. These are just very different personality types. But the thing that I would argue folks that build really big companies have in common is, is they just really want it and they really believe in themselves, and they really believe they can make it work. And that there's somehow deep in their internal psyche, there's something that's like, I'm the one and I won't accept this not working. And even though objectively there's all this data coming in, this isn't working. This is bad. You know, my employees want to quit. My executives want to quit. You know, whatever it is, somewhere deep down in there, they're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to make this work. This company is going to be big. And they. And they. They just believe. And it's almost like that internal gravitational force inside of them is so large, it kind of warps the world to bend to that will. And people start to believe it because they believe it so much, and they convince their employees to believe it, and they convinced everyone around them that this is going to happen for them. But. And this is the big but, no one has this at the early stages when they don't have a good idea and they don't have customers and, like, it's objectively not working. I know a lot of founders are like, well, I don't feel that way. Oh, no, maybe I'm an imposter and I shouldn't do a startup. Well, of course you don't feel that way if you haven't talked to any customers and haven't built a product. But what usually happens is you pivot to a good idea, or you start with a good idea that you care about and customers you care about, and you launch it. And the better the product does, the more obsessed you get with your own company. Like, I. I think in the case of Stripe, I don't want to, you know, tell Patrick's story for him, but I recall him saying it at some point, he wasn't as sure that Stripe was going to work until they were like a year or two in. And then once it started working, and then he, you know, they really believed in it, but it wasn't. Like he woke up one day and, like, stripe is the thing, it's going to work. I think you build conviction, the more customers reflect back to you and data reflects back to you that you're on the right track.
