What Makes The Top 10% Of Founders Different? - Michael Seibel

One of the questions I get often during the batch of YC is what separates out a top 10% founder versus everyone else. When I started at YC, I didn't really have enough context to know as a founder. My own company, of course, had my own friends, but that was a relatively small sample size. Over the last 13 batches, I've gotten to interact with about over 2,500 founders, and so I've been able to get a slightly stronger opinion about what makes a great founder stand out.

Um, the first thing that I'll say is great founders execute. I'll be really specific about what that means. When I do office hours with a great founder and they say they're going to do something, two weeks later they've done it, and they've learned something. They do that consistently. They have the consistent ability to say what they want to do, do it, and then learn from that. That doesn't mean that what they wanted to do was correct; it doesn't mean they want to continue down that direction. But they never get stuck in the execution step. They never say, "Oh, I want to do this," and then come back two weeks later and say, "Oh, we couldn't do it." They always figure out a way to get some version of it done and then learn from it.

The second thing, and really derives from the first, is formidable 'ti. They're formidable. One of the things that happens when somebody says they're gonna do something and then does it over and over and over again is that you learn that that person gets things done. It's pretty intimidating to work with someone who's constantly getting things done. Not intimidating in a bad way, but intimidating in a way where they demand respect because they get things done. So, when you talk to them, you treat them with more respect. You treat their goals with more respect because you think they're more likely to accomplish them, and you treat their tasks with more respect because you know they're going to do them. So, the ability to execute creates permit ability. Permit ability is extremely important.

The last one, and one that I didn't understand until doing many, many YC interviews, is communication. I used to think that you could just execute well and not have to be able to communicate. But the problem is that startups really require good communication: communication with your users, communication with potential investors, with your co-founders, with potential employees. An effective founder always has to be talking about their business and getting people excited about it.

The number one mistake I see founders making is they can't actually explain what their business does. The best founders can, in one or two sentences, explain exactly what their business does. They can explain it to a customer, they can explain it to an investor, they can explain it to their mother; they could explain it to anyone of any level of knowledge about their industry, and they can do it without stumbling. And I think that's ridiculously important because, in order for you to get advice, investment, or to convince someone to join your company, they first have to understand what you do. You would be surprised how many founders can't clearly explain what they do well enough so that they can start selling you on how you can help them or join them.

So, once again, the three most important things I see that separate our top 10% founders from everyone else are: first, the ability to execute; second, the resulting formidable 'ti— you kind of respect them more; and third, the ability to clearly communicate what they're working on.

Now, if I were to add a fourth bonus one, it would be, and this is a little bit strange, but internal motivation. Another way of saying it is that they don't get too discouraged when things go wrong. They stay motivated. A startup is a game where you're going to fail all the time. You're gonna make bad decisions all the time. You're gonna have strong hypotheses that turn out to be wrong. There's a type of person who doesn't get discouraged even if they make the wrong move five times, five times in a row. They stay passionate about the problem, they stay passionate about trying to find a solution, and they keep on executing and moving forward.

Being motivated in the face of defeat or failure is an extremely important thing for a startup founder to be able to do. So, I said three, but I cheated: it’s four— execution, formidable 'ti, communication, and motivation. Those are the things that look— and then make top 10% startups, standout founders. One thing I didn't say was idea. It is usually very hard to tell whether in a very early stage company has a good idea; it's very hard. And so I never use idea to separate out great founders from anyone else because I'm not the arbiter of what a good idea is, and I don't have perfect experience in every problem.

So, whenever I kind of overthink, "Oh, is this a good idea or not?" I can get stuck in my own head, and I can also pretend that I know more than I do. So, try not to focus on the idea. Cheers!