Your Founder Fit

Hello! Hide Sustle is a blog exploring the intersections of entrepreneurship, finance, and psychology. The following is a thought-piece exploring my observations on the various founder types.

What kind of founder are you?

I’ve observed that founders can be distinctly categorized into different “types” based on their paths to building companies.

The Visionary

This is the type of founder who solves a problem you didn’t know you had. This founder laughs in the face of the “traditional” startup building methodology - problem validation, speaking with potential customers, ensuring your problem is worth solving, etc. A main component that the Visionary bypasses is that of collecting customer feedback.

A classic example is Steve Jobs dismissing the standard practice of keyboards for multi-touch screens on the first iPhone.  

The “X” Turned Founder

I will make a distinction pertaining to time-in-industry between this founder and the founders who frequent the two subsequent categories. The “X” turned founder is someone who has spent 10+ years in an industry and has experienced the problem they want to solve first-hand.

An example here is any well established professional who “turns into” a founder - hence the “X” turned founder. For example, the Psychologist-turned-founder, Medical-Doctor-turned-founder, etc.

There is a major advantage to this founder category because usually, after so much time in industry, the founder has a competitive network to leverage for pilot programs, customer discovery interviews, and sometimes even initial funding.

The Stumbler

The one who stumbles upon a problem - this founder does not need to have many years of experience in the field they are in, it could be just 1 or 2. Oftentimes this is someone who happens to be in the right place at the right time, is receptive to the problem before them, and bold enough to question the status quo. These founders are usually younger and often spot a problem in their work environment.

A great example is Vlad Magdalin, the founder and CEO of Webflow. Magdalin was working as a software engineer at a web services company translating the client’s vision into code for web pages. This not only took him hours, but his company charged its clients an astronomical fee. This was a serious issue - people who lacked basic coding knowledge were being charged an arm and a leg (Magdalin believed, unnecessarily). He wanted to change that. This is the origin story of Webflow (link to the podcast where Magdalin discusses this).

The One Who Experiences the Problem First-Hand

This is the type of founder who solves a problem they have experienced, or watched someone close to them experience, first-hand. This founder is different from the previous two because they do not necessarily require time in industry to become aware of the problem - they experience the problem personally.

This was the case for Erin Quick, Co-Founder and CEO of PairTree. Quick experienced reproductive issues that resulted in her and her husband spending more than $70,000 on artificial inseminations and in vitro fertilization, but the process ultimately resulted in three miscarriages. Afterward, Quick said she was emotionally, physically and financially broken. She eventually decided to adopt, thinking the process would be easy, but it turned out to be a long and arduous.

PairTree was founded to help its users navigate the private, domestic adoption process - connecting adopting families with a birth mother that’s right for them and vice versa (link to an article covering PairTree).

The Problem Seeker

This is the category I belonged to when building Koala. This is by no means a bad place to be, but I'd say it comes with the most challenges - purely because the founders in this category have to establish, from the ground up, what founders in categories 2-4 are already privy to before they begin their founder journey.

Depending on which category you belong to, this could include:

• Industry expertise derived from years of experience in one specific domain.

• Knowledge that a problem is worth solving (highly painful to those entities who experience it).

• A network to leverage - in the case of the “X” turned founder this could be the entities they previously worked with.

• An outline / knowledge of the ideal customer profile - in Magdalin’s example, these were the current customers of his employer; in Quick’s example, these were single parents or families likes herself who wanted to adopt a child in a seamless manner.

This founder is looking for a problem to solve. It can be done, but not without concerted patience in the search to find a problem worth solving. You can learn more about how to find a problem worth solving in the Building Blocks series.

These categories are by no means exhaustive, nor are they necessarily mutually exclusive.

Additionally, this is not a hierarchical construct of future success - a founder who is of category 2 is not more likely to succeed than a founder of category 4.

But I believe it can be a good exercise to learn which type of founder you are - thus enabling you to understand what leverage you have.

For example (and to reiterate), if you are of category 2, then you’ll likely have the ability to take advantage of your industry network for the purpose of pilot programs, customer development interviews, and in some cases even funding. All of which you should leverage to your benefit.

Fin! I hope you found this post a catalyst for self-reflection and introspection, see you in the next section.

- Ariella

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