Founders: No Map. No Guide. No Limits.

What does it take to be a successful startup founder? An innovation that you turn into a product which customers will pay for? A scalable sales process? Of course, you need a great team around you, but timing is also an essential ingredient, as is an smart marketing strategy. However, for me, it’s all about the founder’s mindset.

Today’s startup environment requires founders to ooze an entrepreneurial spirit that combines the ingenuity of Nikola Tesla, the swagger of Indiana Jones and the creativity of Picasso. Wrapped around this, they need to possess a distinctive and disruptive sense of purpose that sets them apart to give them the mindset for mental and physical resilience.

Ignore the celebrity founders, look to the mavericks. You won’t see the maverick founders on the startup event circuit, paraded as paragons at fireside chats talking about themselves. Mavericks have the innate founder mindset, they do the work that matters most - the work of originality - to be the first to do something - that’s important to them.

Founder’s mindset means creativity, determination, resourcefulness to act at speed with purpose and intent, taking risk. Founders make hard choices. They have better instincts and believe in a long-term perspective, building a sustainable, high growth venture. Founders believe that advantage lies with the front runners in the closest vicinity to the customers.

Founder’s internal traits drive them to act like insurgents, agitated to move forward.? The founder’s mindset is a lens that identifies strategic priorities, hearing the voice of their customers to build their version of the future. The thestartupfactory.tech invests almost exclusively in embryonic startups yet to develop their MVP, and we have a ‘founder first’ approach to evaluating new ideas, whereby the founder’s mindset has become the single most important thing to assess.

In my view, mindset plays the most significant role in whether a founder finds success or not. Let me elaborate. A growth mindset leads to a desire to learn, embrace challenge, persist in the setbacks, see efforts as a path to mastery, learn from criticism, and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. They are relentless in their pursuit and application of their vision. This leads to higher levels of achievement.

I think it is the single best attribute to evaluate as a marker of potential founder success. So, you may be asking, well then what do you look for? It is simple. I look for proof that someone got off of an established path, are bold in their thinking and doing, taking an extreme gamble, and coming out ahead. They are adventurers, experimenters, explorers of the unknown.

Close your eyes, imagine this: a little tent moves in the wind, under a harsh, brooding dark sky. You’ve pitched your tent. The image of that tent depicts perhaps one of the most important and dangerous places anyone has ever slept.?

One hundred and twelve years ago today, at 3pm December 14, 1911 Roald Amundsen arrived at the South Pole. The tent and the camp surrounding it were given the name Polheim, which translates as Home at the Pole, by Amundsen. It was the temporary home of the pioneering crew who were the first humans at the South Pole.

Amundsen won the race to the Pole ahead of Robert Falcon Scott, arriving a month before him, yet poignantly it was Scott’s crew that took the last ever picture of the camp as they rested there until starting off on their tragic return journey. Since they left, the tent has never been seen and probably won’t be seen ever again.

Amundsen left Christiana, Norway in August 1910 on board the Fram with provisions for two years and a hundred Greenland sled dogs that were to be the key in his subsequent success in reaching the South Pole. He reached Antarctica and landfall at the Bay of Whales on January 14, 1911, where a winter base was established. Depots were set up between then and April when the sun set for the long Antarctic winter, depots of stores that would be used in the push the following spring.

At 3pm on Friday, December 14, 1911, the party arrived at the South Pole. They erected a small tent and placed inside it a letter and then set off back to their winter base. They arrived 39 days later with all five men and eleven dogs ‘hale and hearty’. The party that reached the South Pole first was: Roald Amundsen, Olav Olavson Bjaaland, Hilmer Hanssen, Sverre H. Hassel, Oscar Wisting.

Truly innovators, truly entrepreneurs. They had done something nobody else had done before. Amundsen continued his explorations in the Arctic. Alas he disappeared without trace in 1928 while searching for the survivors of an airship crash.

So, what are the lessons to be learned from Amundsen and his cohort of fellow explorers like Shackleton for C21st entrepreneurs in pursuit of their own personal goals? What are the key traits in their attitude to adventure and pushing the boundaries that today’s entrepreneurs can look to replicate?

1. Don't take a parachute When launching, new business ventures face a significant risk on not knowing what they don’t know with little to no safety net. ?Explorers like Amundsen anticipate trauma and failure along the way, and don’t have a prepared safety net.

Takeaway: Successful founders and explorers have an eternal optimism and positive mindset. Both know they face risk and uncertainty and will have to make-it-up-as-they-go-along.

2. Don't hold out for better opportunities Amundsen seized the moment, beating Scott to the Pole with better strategy, planning and execution. He endured terrible weather conditions. Entrepreneurs take advantage of new opportunities even when the conditions arent optimal, and when others don’t make a move.

Takeaway: Take a step forward first. Savvy entrepreneurs understand that it takes a little elbow grease and sharp elbows to achieve success.

3. Work effectively under pressure There's nothing riskier than riding on top of a Saturn V rocket with enough chemical energy to be the equivalent of a small atomic bomb, not to mention the threat of being sucked into the vacuum of space. In 1969, that’s what Neil Armstrong faced as part of his journey to become the first person to walk on the moon.

Takeaway: Similarly, entrepreneurs focus on the bigger picture, they push through the pressure and accept risks to get closer to accomplishing their goals.

4. Don't let stuff cloud your vision In 2001, Erik Weilhenmayer became the first blind person to climb the summit of Everest. But he didn’t stop there. He scaled each continent’s tallest peak (known as the ‘Seven Summits’) and kayaked 277 miles on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

Takeaway: The way you perceive challenges affects your ability to conquer them. The most successful entrepreneurs find work arounds when faced with apparently immovable barriers.

5. Take the road less travelled Ed Stafford holds the world record for walking the entire length of the Amazon River. His journey spanned over 4,000 miles, including an 18,000-foot mountain, taking over two years to complete. He documented every step of his expedition.

Takeaway: For entrepreneurs, the road less travelled often holds the hidden opportunity. They are driven by curiosity and chart their own path to success without following the steps of others.??

6. Accept failure with open arms It only takes a handful of customers to say ‘yes’ to make launch of your startup a success, but dont be surprised if your journey takes you somewhere different than where you set out for.

Takeaway: Amundsen had to conquer whatever unexpected obstacles he encountered. As an entrepreneur you must be willing to take risks in order for your business to succeed. The biggest risk is not taking any risk - that is guaranteed to fail,

Known as ‘the last of the Vikings’, Amundsen was a lifelong adventurer with a gift for organisation and planning. An Amundsen camp lives on at the South Pole - The Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is a US-run research station right near the South Pole South Pole Station

The first was built 1956 and became the first permanent human structure at the South Pole, setting down some of the first human presence on the entire continent. The original station has been upgraded a number of times in the last seventy years, but has retained its name as a tribute to two of the men who raced to reach the place it now stands.

I think you can see the parallels between an entrepreneur and an explorer are quite clear. It’s about having a fire in your heart and ice in your veins, being bold, being brave and being true to yourself. No one is so brave that they are not troubled by something unexpected, anyone can be bold from a safe distance, but explorers and entrepreneurs embrace adversity: No Map. No Guide. No Limits.