"Video Lecture _ Lecture 13 How to be a Great Founder”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ7ZvO5DpIw



  This post is about main ideas discussed in the 13th lecture 'How to be a Great Founder' by Reid Hoffman. He is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. The lecture begins by defining who and what a great founder is. Classically this tends to be Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. And it's an image of the founder as Superwoman, or Superman, who has this panopticon of skills. Thus, a great founder is diverse, well-rounded person who can do all the things such as how to make a product or service fit, how to market a product, how to fundraise, how to manage.  There are some skills that a great founder should have. First of all a teamwork which will help to neutralize each other weaknesses because no one is perfect. Secondly, location this means to be aware where your company will be strong, know the marketplace and know where your product or service fit. In order to have results, you should both work and delegate 100%. Otherwise, 50% work 50% delegate will not give anything. Moreover, you have to be flexible and persistent. Being flexible means to look for the problem and solve it. Next, you should be both confident and cautious. It is known that a great founder must be able to hold beliefs and opinions with confidence. But also be smart enough to accept the criticism, negative feedback, and competitive entries and using the information improve and solve the problems. Then, it will be useful to be focused internally and externally as in this way you will not ignore the world and competitors. Thus, managing to do these steps you will have more chances to achieve success. Another question is concentrate on work by vision or data. Indeed, data exists in the structure of a vision that you are constructing and a hypothesis of where you are going to reach. In fact, sometimes data might even be negative and you will think that this negative data means that you have to change the way of thinking. However, a great founder absolutely keeps on a particular vision of what they are doing. When you have that special vision you do not certainly ever stop at that great vision which you were considering about. Next, you should be a risk taker and know how to take intelligent risk. As a great founder must learn to minimize the risk. It is also important to have a long-term vision in mind and also solve the problems immediately in front of you. Therefore as a great founder, you have to be focused both on long-term and short-term. So after all these tips how to recognize if you are a great founder or not. Mainly, you have to be a good product person. It’s valuable to have good skills about leadership, bringing networks in, persuading people, and it’s also helpful to be able to recognize whether you are on track or not.

 After this discussion, there were several questions.

1. What strategy is needed for selecting right early adopters?

Entirety necessary thing to think about is the product distribution. Your strategy today has to be cautious looking for a product distribution. It has to be a really decisive edge.

2. How do you if someone is a good founder or not?

Being accurate the networking is the solution. A lot of people are an immense believer of references.

3. How important is the ability to connect insight?

Some people would clearly say that the ability to say coherently what you are addressing, to articulate something that isn’t trying to boil the ocean or a wise army knife approach. Truly it is pretty crucial in being able to judge a founder. The reason is if you do not have that matched of accuracy; you are not going to be able to compile the network behind you.  Moreover, you are not going to be able to make investors and employees. In order not to face such inconvenience you have to be able to combine a very clear mission about what you are doing. Therefore, insight is valuable although a little bit of this depends on the stage.

4. How do you keep persistence when starting?

The main point is to understand and believe in your product. Think about the product as a solution which will bring good to everyone, and everyone should live with it. Moreover, you must have a great confidence and passion for it. Even though it takes longer than anticipated to where you want to be, but constantly remember and tell yourself that it is going to be okay and it is going to deserve it.

5. What makes a good co-founder?

The most significant thing is to collaborate well. You must have serious-trust between each other.

6. How to identify good founders in different areas?

There is great founder across all. All founders– there are exceptions. Generally speaking as an investor, this is part of the reason a lot of investors have a certain set of things they absorb really well and reapply, is because they try to understand a field really well to be able to identify which of the founders in this domain really matter. So there are attributes that are unique per domain.


 

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