The qualities of good founding teams vs. bad founding teams

Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of InvestStream Q&A. I'm Bunkoj and thanks for joining me again this week. Another viewer recently submitted a question asking what's the difference between a good founder and a bad founder. For an early stage company? And this is really just sticking to early stage companies where a lot of things are uncertain at this point. So let's start with qualities that we want to try and avoid in a founding team. There are obvious ones like founders who might lie or kind of not tell you the whole story or kind of fudge things a little bit. But then there are those who and these are all for early stage companies where a lot of things are still unknown and up in the air. Founders that focus on vanity metrics rather than real KPIs. Sometimes they haven't even defined what their real KPIs are. They're not even sure. And to be honest, that's not always indicative of a bad founder. The business just may not be far enough along to really determine what some of those things could be. Founders who don't spend time trying to build a leadership team, but instead focus on building their own personal brand, that's a big red flag. A founder who doesn't keep his or her co founders involved and aware of things that are happening in the business, like fundraising, partnerships, major hires, things like that, that's also a red flag. A founder who doesn't communicate with investors regularly, keeping them abreast of what's happening in the business and asking for help when and where they need it. These are all red flags that I try to look for when I'm meeting a company. Now, some of the qualities that I look for to determine if I think a founding team is going to be successful or not are one. They have serious hustle. They'll use whatever tools at their disposal to meet the goals they've identified. They move quickly and iterate on feedback from the customers or users. They're not afraid of making mistakes, and they've put some sort of framework or process in place to determine when they've made a mistake and learn from it as quickly as possible. And of course, iterate again. They communicate, and I can't stress how important this is. They communicate with each other. They communicate with their customers or users, they communicate with investors and other stakeholders, and they invest time into building relationships. They have a clear understanding of what metrics are important for the survival and growth of their business, and they focus on those metrics rather than vanity metrics. They don't give up no matter how tough things seem to get. And perseverance, I think, is one of the most important qualities that I want to see in founders. Because things are going to get tough. There are going to be relationships that get frayed, there's going to be times where you're running out of money, you can't make payroll, whole bunch of things. If a founder can struggle through those things and keep pushing, keep going, the chance of them getting that one break or that one meeting with the right person that can help them get through and get to the next stage becomes more likely, right? So perseverance, I think, is the most important quality in good founders. So I hope this was helpful to you. Please give the video a thumbs up and leave your comments or questions in the section below. I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks again for joining me on investstream Q&A if you've got a question, feel free to drop us an email at investstreamlockhackio or tweet me on Twitter, or feel free to leave a comment in the section below. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss a single episode of investream.