Well, you should have some superpowers. It's generally speaking useful to be a good product person. It's useful to have good skills in leadership, bringing networks in, persuading people, and it's useful to be able to -and this is kind of fundamental- recognize whether you are on track or not. Generally speaking, you have to have some things that are a unique edge to you, some things that are unique to the problem you are trying to solve, and some things that will help you get an edge. Because competitive differentiation and competitive edge are super important.

How to be a great founder

It's usually best to have two or three people you trust on a team rather than being a solo founder. It's not to say that solo founders don't actually play out successfully. But most often, two or three people are much better.If you have two or three founders, you have different skills you can compensate. In the diversity of problems you encounter as a founder, you can actually attack them.

The founding team

Great founders seek the networks that will be essential to their task. And they realize it's not just about, "I am superman, I can do this anywhere". In order to be successful, you have to go to where the strongest networks are for the particular kind of thing that I am doing.The reason why Silicon Valley startups are so successful is because of all of the great people you meet there.

The choice of location

It's very conventional to say you're a contrarian these days. So it's actually pretty easy to become contrarian. It's hard to be contrarian and right. When you think about being contrarian, you have to think about how is it that smart people disagree with you, from a position of intelligence. And that there is something that you know that they don't know that will actually play out to be true.

Being a contrarian

As a founder, should you be doing the work? Or should you be recruiting people and delegating the work? The answer to this is, actually, you need to do both. In fact, not only you need to do both, but you need to sometimes do one at 100% and sometimes the other at 100%.  And so what you will see, when you start thinking about what makes you a great founder, is you navigate these apparent paradoxes.

Delegating vs. doing the work

And the reason for this is that entrepreneurs are frequently given the advice to have a vision and stay firm against their adversity.<ul><li> Realize that you have this vision that is contrarian to what people think and just stay on track. Get through the difficult times and get there. </li><li>The other piece of advice given with each equal vigor is to listen to data and listen to customers. Pivot, be flexible.</li></ul>Part of what being a great founder means is being both able to think about what it is you want to be doing, and also being smart enough that you are listening to criticism.

Be both flexible and persistent

Founders are thought of as being risk takers. Where everyone else cowers in fear, they boldly go out. You have to be a risk taker, you have to be thinking about how you make a really coherent risk because in fact the only really big opportunities happen to be ones that have more risks associated with them. On the other hand, when you are beginning to apply how you think about risks as an entrepreneur, you have to also think about how you essentially take this risk in an intelligent way that doesn't just go, "oh yeah, risk to the wind, who cares."

The risk takers

You should jump between them. You should always have a long-term vision in mind. But if you are not focused on solving the problem that's immediately in front of you, you're screwed. So part of the question about how to put these things together is you say, "okay short term- what's the thing I need to be doing today? Have I made progress today? have I made progress this week? But is it largely on path?"

Long-term vision vs solving a local near-term problem

It's a constantly changing problem to face when you are trying to found a company. There is not one skill set, there is an ability to learn and adapt. And an ability to constantly have a vision that's driving you, but also to be taking input from all sources and then to be creating networks all around you. And that's essentially what makes a great founder.

How do you gather networks around you?

People frequently think product strategy is fundamental to startups- I have a product idea, that's a thing, I'm a founder. Actually, the next level down on strategy is usually product distribution, because no matter how good your product is, if it doesn't get the customers, you’re hosed.

Product distribution

That is actually pretty important in being able to judge a founder. Because if you don't have that level of clarity, you are not going to be able to assemble the network behind you. You are not going to be able to get investors, you are not going to be able to get employees. You have to be able to articulate a very clear mission about what you are doing.

The ability to say coherently what you are targeting

How to Start a Business: A Startup Guide for Entrepreneurs

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Money & Investments

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Personal Development

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Startups

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Entrepreneurship

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Business

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Leadership & Management

The Startup Masterclass

Lecture Transcript: http://www.genius.com/Reid-hoffman-lecture-13-how-to-be-a-great-founder-annotated So you've learned how to get started, how to raise money, how to build products, and how to grow. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock Ventures, addresses many of the questions and confusions that might be cropping up - How to be a Great Founder. See the slides and readings at http://www.startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec13 Discuss this lecture: http://www.startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64042

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Videos

Lecture Transcript: http://www.genius.com/Reid-hoffman-lecture-13-how-to-be-a-great-founder-annotated

So you've learned how to get started, how to raise money, how to build products, and how to grow. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock Ventures, addresses many of the questions and confusions that might be cropping up - How to be a Great Founder.

See the slides and readings at http://www.startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec13

Discuss this lecture: http://www.startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64042

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Y Combinator

How to Be a Great Founder with Reid Hoffman (How to Start a Startup 2014: Lecture 13)

How to Be a Great Founder with Reid Hoffman (How to Start a Startup)

When managed correctly, group decision-making—an inherently inclusive process—is one of the most successful ways to make effective decisions. It can help:<ul><li>Generate buy-in from stakeholders by involving them from the beginning</li><li>Build consensus by inclusively considering the pros and cons of each option</li><li>Encourage workplace creativity by surfacing ideas from any individual or team, not just leadership or internal subject matter experts</li><li>Create more favorable business outcomes by sharing decision-making responsibilities with everyone.</li></ul>

Group Decision-Making

If managed incorrectly, group decision-making can result in poor business outcomes. A flawed group decision-making facilitation process might:<ul><li>Trivialize or replace high-priority tasks with lower priority tasks, resulting in collective procrastination</li><li>Diffuse accountability throughout the entire group, thereby avoiding responsibility for poor outcomes</li><li>Create inefficient groups that struggle to focus on the big picture and go off on tangents</li><li>Contribute to “groupthink” where group members reach a consensus without critically evaluating alternative viewpoints.</li></ul>

Disadvantages of Group Decision-Making

<ul><li>Bain and Company’s RAPID Decision-Making Model can help organizations make better decisions when multiple stakeholders are involved. RAPID clarifies decision accountability.</li><li>Each letter in the word RAPID signifies a group member’s role during the decision-making process. According to Bain and Company, when roles are clearly delineated in this way, groups make the right choices swiftly and effectively.</li><li>It’s important to note that not every decision merits the level of effort and investment that goes into creating explicit RAPID roles. Nonetheless, RAPID is a useful framework for larger decisions.</li></ul>

The RAPID Framework

The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) relies on a moderator who records ideas produced during a group or individual brainstorming session. Group members discuss their ideas with the moderator, who compiles a list of all the ideas.Participants or a panel of decision-makers then vote using index cards numbered one through five. The numbers correspond to the priority the idea should receive. The votes are then calculated and ideas pursued in order of the priority score they received.

The Nominal Group Technique

The Delphi Technique is similar to NGT but instead of in-person discussion, it relies on questionnaires to gather information and insights from a group of anonymous individuals.The questionnaires are delivered in rounds and the questions in each round are determined by the responses from the round before. Starting in the second round, participants rank the ideas presented by order of priority. The questions grow progressively more focused on a small subset of ideas on which the leaders make a decision.

The Delphi Technique

<ol><li>Frame the decision. Framing a decision sets the overall context. To do this effectively, leaders should critically examine the overall issue they face.</li><li>Generating alternatives. Once leaders have framed the problem and understood the context, they should determine alternative solutions. The more options generated, the greater the team’s likelihood of uncovering an innovative solution. I</li><li>Decide the course of action. When enough alternatives are created, the process of group decision-making can finally begin. </li></ol>

Decision-Engineering Process

<ul><li>Involve all employees.</li><li>Keep it anonymous. If employees feel that their responses can identify them, they are more likely to withhold their true opinions due to fear of retribution.</li><li>Beware of non-proven techniques. Some methods of conducting group decision-making create barriers to effective, efficient, and objective decisions. </li><li>Share collective responsibility for the outcome. All members should feel accountable for the decision and its outcome. </li></ul>

Improving the Group Decision-Making Process

Collecting diverse opinions and perspectives to inform decision-making is essential. When decisions affect many people across an organization, group

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Career

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Teamwork

Effective Group Decision-Making Techniques

Choosing a business partner is similar to choosing a life partner. If you make a wrong decision, it can make life overly complicated. When you know you will need to spend countless hours together, it is wise to find someone with whom you can get along and trust well. Choosing a co-founder requires you to make a level-headed and informed decision.

Choosing a co-founder

It is often good to find someone who can balance your strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you don't have sufficient technical knowledge, look for one that can balance it out. The business partner you choose should be willing to fit with the culture of your company.

Complementary skills

To maintain a working relationship, choose someone you can respect and talk things over with. The person should be as intelligent and hardworking as you. Both of you should respect and accept the other's contribution to the company.

Mutual respect

The mission and passion of both partners should be aligned. Ensure that you are united over shared interests and are on the same page as far as the company's future is concerned.

Mission and passion alignment

A business partner should have a matched personality to yours. You will need to meet various people, and both of you should be presentable and confident. If you can unwind with your business partner, you will be more able to meet the challenges of the job.

Personality match

Choosing a business partner can be equal to choosing someone to get married to and when you make the wrong decisions, life can all be extremely messy.

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

What Should You be Looking in Your Co-founder?

Founding a startup with your friend can test the strongest friendship. There are pages of startup history filled with partnerships torn on the road to success. If you're planning on starting a new venture with your friend, there are several things you should consider.

Founding a startup with friends

Consider what makes someone a friend. It is often because you share values, interests, or relatable life experiences that draw you together. The perceived closeness creates a deep sense of commitment or responsibility. These can help founding teams in the early stage of a startup. But the risk is when one friend develops an extreme dependency on the other. For example, one friend will continually voice their expectations to be consulted on every occasion or will repeatedly look to their business partner for validation.

Friends are similar

A founding startup team should possess a unique combination of skills that you can bank on. But it is seldom that anyone can master all the skills required, so pairing up with friends can broaden the company's skill set. It is equally important to know your friend's limitations and accept them.

Know your friend's limitations

You and your friends may start at the same point and have similar dreams and ideas, but you may also find that venturing together brings other challenges that may impact relationships. Startup challenges, such as pivoting or funding, often cause hard conversations and the need to prioritise professionalism over friendship. Your ability to support each other and find solutions without blaming is vital.

Overcome problems without blaming each other

The dynamics of friendship will change over time and can be very tricky in a working setup. Psychologist Adam Grand's model shows that people are seen either as givers, takers or matchers. The giver wants to give (but don't get enough in return), and the taker takes from what they've handed. This can cause friction over time. However, those who can accept that the relationship has shifted and will not return have transitioned to becoming great co-founders.

Friendship inevitably changes

Before starting a venture with your bestie, there are a few things you should consider.

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Love & Relationships

Can Friends Be Successful Co-Founders?

Boreout is when we are chronically bored by our work to the point of our work feeling utterly pointless. Factors that can cause chronic boredom includes:<ul><li>A demoralising physical environment, like a cubicle farm.</li><li>Feeling under-challenged over a long time.</li><li>Meaninglessness - feeling that the work doesn't have any purpose.</li></ul>

Boreout  - being chronically bored at work

Experts say this phenomenon can result in the same health problems for workers as burnout. Studies show that chronic boredom increased the likelihood of employees' turnover, early retirement intention, poor self-rated health and stress symptoms. Depression from boreout can lead to physical ailments from insomnia to headaches.

Harmful effects of boreout

Workers who are chronically boreout are more reluctant to address it because it has been ongoing for so long. They may not want to take up the issue with managers as it reflects a lack of interest and motivation. <ul><li>A quick fix can be to take on work tasks that are more interesting to you.</li><li>In inherently dull tasks, other aspects, such as good relationships or feeling appreciated, can bring meaning.</li><li>Management also plays a major role in creating an office culture that makes people feel valuable.</li></ul>

Fixing boreout can be tricky

In the same way we're increasing discussions around burnout, work-life balance, and workplace inequalities, experts say we need to talk about boreout. Talking only about stress and burnout in the workplace is insufficient to address the spectrum of human suffering at work. Discussing boreout could broaden our understanding of what makes a good work-life. Organisations can re-think their human resource philosophies and organise work in a more sustainable way.

Make boreout part of conversation

Being chronically bored at work can have damaging consequences – and we need to talk about it more, say experts.

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Health

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Time Management

The damaging effects of 'boreout' at work

Hearing the term 'revolving door' in the workplace can mean constant staff turnover and signal something very wrong with how a company is managed.
Yet, a little bit of disruption can also be positive. New research shows that shaking up your team just the right amount or bringing new faces into an organisation can increase creativity.

Constantly changing team members

Researchers wanted to test the idea that new faces can make a huge impact. They used Doctor Who from the world of television. Doctor Who is a science-fiction programme where the Doctor solves crimes and saves planets. Doctor Who regenerates rather than dies. Thirteen lead actors have portrayed the character.
The researchers found that the teams with more new faces produced high-rated episodes. The fewer new faces the worse average ratings those episodes received in the study.

The 'fresh face' effect

Studies have shown that more diverse teams - in terms of race, gender and other factors - are more successful. The different perspectives increase innovation.
Teams just need one or two new faces to bring a fresh perspective. Team success isn't even dependent on the person bringing new knowledge. Explaining to a new person how you do things can force you to think consciously and give you a new perspective.

More perspectives drive innovation

There's something counterintuitive about changing team members regularly. 
Most companies desire stability, especially if the team is doing really well. But knowing the benefits, managers need to be aware of the potentially positive impact of new blood.

The necessary 'shock'

A constantly changing team can seem counter to success. But this inconsistency may actually be the key to creating something amazing.

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Remote Work

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Problem Solving

Why a revolving door of team members is fuel for success

However, meetings are often frustrating. Most of the time, the same people who do all the talking. They often derail the meeting and make it take longer than planned. 
Similarly, it's always the same people who are quiet, and there is a concern that the lack of engagement will affect good team commitments.

People want engagement and focus in their meetings

<ul>
<li>C - Captain. Every ship (every meeting) needs a captain to get it safely to its destination at an appointed time. </li>
<li>O - Outcome. We need to know where we're going, so it's important to articulate the desired outcome of your meeting in the invitation.</li>
<li>P - Process. We need to know how we're going to get to the destination. This takes planning. If the outcome is a decision, we need to ask how to reach that decision, e.g. vote, consensus, etc.</li>
<li>E - Equity (an equal opportunity to speak).</li>
</ul>

The COPE strategy for every meeting

Imagine you're in a meeting when some colleagues start having a side conversation that dominates the meeting.
<ul>
<li>First, listen. Wait for an opening.</li>
<li>Then step in and validate. Ask a question to break the momentum of their conversation. For example, "Can I ask you a question?" followed by "That all sounds very interesting."</li>
<li>Now redirect by asking, "Can you help me understand how what you're saying relates to the topic on our agenda?" This can help bring them back to the objective of the meeting.</li>
</ul>

How to encourage an equal opportunity to speak

We tolerate meetings that don't stay on track because we tell ourselves there is nothing we can do - that we can't interrupt because it would be rude. We also worry that we might be rejected, so we sit through long meetings.
Elon Musk once wrote an email to his staff saying that they should walk out of a meeting if it's evident that they aren't adding value. It's rude to make someone stay and waste time.

In meetings, we get what we allow

After years of being stuck in meetings that were endless and unproductive, Madeleine van Hauke decided to start a business to help organizations get rid of these drains of people's time and energy. Here, she shares her best advice for effective, productive get-togethers.

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Corporate Culture

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Communication

How to stop the same people from doing all the talking and other strategies to keep your meetings on track

Employees can decide whether to act like givers or takers.
<ul>
<li>When they act like givers, they contribute without looking for anything in turn, such as offering assistance, sharing knowledge, or making valuable introductions.</li>
<li>When they act as takers, they try to get other people to serve their ends while hoarding their expertise and time.</li>
</ul>
Studies found a strong link between employee giving and desirable business outcomes, such as higher profitability, productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

Givers and takers

Leaders recognise the importance of generous behaviour and desire more of it. But workers receive mixed messages about being generous. In promotion decisions, only one person advances. Productivity could also suffer. In competitive bonus pools, more money to the top performers means less for the rest. This leads employees to undercut rather than support their colleagues' efforts.
It creates a challenge of how to promote generosity without cutting into productivity and reducing fairness.

The downside of employee generosity

A challenge for managers is how to protect already-generous people from giving too much of their attention that could slow down their productivity and limiting selfish coworkers who feel they have a license to treat good people like doormats.
A solution involves helping givers act on their generous impulses more productively. Employees need a better understanding of what generosity is and learn to distinguish it from timidity, availability, and empathy.

Understanding generosity

Givers are often timid because acting in others' interest can make it difficult to assert your own.
Managers can help givers to separate timidity from generosity. They can teach givers to shift their frame of reference to advocate for others using relational accounts. Ask employees to think of others who share their interests and then make a verbal commitment to help that person. Being tough when representing other's interests will help their self-image as givers.

Overcoming timidity with agency

Givers are inclined to accommodate all the requests for help - neglecting their own responsibilities while being at the mercy of takers.
<ul>
<li>Instead of accommodating every request for help, givers need to set up boundaries. Set aside windows of quiet time during which you can focus on deep work.</li>
<li>Ask managers for support to help mentor juniors.</li>
<li>When dealing with takers, givers can help only if takers will pay it forward.</li>
</ul>

Setting limits on your availability

Empathy is a trap givers need to avoid. A busy person moved to empathy can spend too much time doing favours they cannot afford.
Managers can teach givers to be perspective takers, not just emphasisers. Instead of trying to imagine what other people are feeling, try to imagine what they are thinking and what their interests are. Givers should gather and use knowledge about other's interests and let a counterpart win on issues that matter less so they can win on issues they value most.

Complementing empathy with perspective-taking

Givers can be categorised into groups. None of these behaviours is necessary for generosity.
<ul>
<li>Some are hesitant to advocate for their own interests.</li>
<li>Some are willing to drop everything to help anyone at any time</li>
<li>Some are easily manipulated by empathy.</li>
</ul>
Teaching employees about the power of agency, boundaries on accessibility, and perspective-taking will:
<ul>
<li>save your best employees,</li>
<li>enable employees to contribute more to others and the success of the company,</li>
<li>create a culture of generosity that will attract more givers to your organisation.</li>
</ul>

Getting the best out of givers

Your organization’s success depends on the generosity of your employees. What do you do to support that?

In the Company of Givers and Takers

During the pandemic and the switch to working from home, companies need ways to keep their teams focused and maintain a sense of togetherness.
But in most cases, virtual team building feels more agonising than the real thing. It is also inherently flawed.

Companies need some form of cohesion

It's much harder to achieve the same level of bonding when you're not physically together.
Research shows that teams who experience mutual hardships strengthen connections, such as struggling through bad weather together.

Physical experiences are more bonding

Effective team building contains two things:
<ul>
<li>A change of scenery, which makes the activity seem like a break from the normal day.</li>
<li>A demonstration that your employer really cares about your wellbeing.</li>
</ul>
Virtual team-building fails at both because it is nearly impossible to provide specialized attention on a group video call. And if you're attending a team-building video chat from your home office, it won't feel like a change of environment.

Effective team building

One school of thought is that the entire concept of team building is flawed, not just that of virtual team building.
Participating in team-building exercises won't usually help. The political and complex nature of the workplace means that people will return to their normal way of behaving.

When the whole concept of team building is flawed

The challenge with online team-building is to simulate the physical experiences of a team-building day trip.
Although online activities fall short, they can work as long as businesses feel like they're fulfilling their goals and the events feel really enjoyable.

Online team building is not pointless

The words ‘team building’ may stoke fear in our hearts at the best of times, but during a pandemic, they often mean several extra hours on Zoom – something we could all live without.

Why virtual team-building activities feel agonising

The ability to drive innovation and breakthrough results by tackling the power of relationships and networks.It recognizes that leaps in creativity and progress cannot be achieved in solitude. They require forming relationships, wielding influence well, and sharing a vision so compelling that others adopt it as their own.

Connectional intelligence

Connectional intelligence highlights an evolution that has been quietly taking place across workplaces all over the world-just like traditional intelligence is "out," so is the old way of working. It's a whole new world in more ways than one; there's less emphasis on conventional hierarchies, more on reshaping office environments and workdays for improved collaboration.

How to Be a Great Founder with Reid Hoffman (How to Start a Startup)

Effective Group Decision-Making Techniques

What Should You be Looking in Your Co-founder?

Can Friends Be Successful Co-Founders?

The damaging effects of 'boreout' at work

Emersyn Z.