What do we look for in Founders?

So you want to be a founder?

Good thing you’re here. Entrepreneurs are like fruits – they come in many tastes, shapes and sizes. However, not all of those fruits fit our specific studio-shaped basket.

Let me talk to you about what it actually takes to turn lemons in to lemonade inside the studio.

Dream big, with purpose and ambition.

Entrepreneurship is not an experiment for you. It is a calling. You cannot breathe unless you are building something. Not just something - something big. Something that could shake up an industry, and change the world for the better.

Entrepreneurial Drive

We already said it: Building businesses is your oxygen.

After building full-time during the day, you go home to work on your side projects, and after those are done, you have the whole weekend reserved to build some more.

Sure, some people call you a workaholic, but they don’t understand that what looks like work to them, feels like play to you.

Purpose

Shallow pursuits are not your cuppa tea. You only chase ideas that hit deep and take root in your core.

Why so serious? Because you got bit by that radioactive spider—you encountered the problem in real life and your frustration with it kicked off your origins-arc.

The only antidote is solving the problem and you won’t rest until you do.

Ambition

You're not here to make a quick buck. You're here to bend the curve of history for the benefit of humankind. Changing the game is your game.

You dream big. With vision. With optimism. You are in it to shake up an industry from its surface to its core and become a genre-defining company of one in the space.

Serve customers, from problems to profit.

At your core, you want to help people and turn their troubles into impact, and eventually—profit.

Where most people flee, you run towards where the fire is. There’s nothing that gets your adrenaline going like a big, hairy, mammoth-sized problem.

Customer-focus

You are here to help people first. You relentlessly focus on delivering customer value, and understand that involving them at every step is the key to building something that people want. Something unique. Something that stands the test of time and lasts.

Business-minded

That doesn’t mean you have to be mother Theresa. The point of doing business is to build up value and turn a profit. You have a keen business sense and understand how to outmanoeuvre the market.

You are no fun at a romantic dinner because you are in your thoughts figuring out: how much does this place make in a year? Why are they popular? How did they get people in the door?

Problem-solver

You understand that the market rewards you in proportion to the size of the problems you are able to solve for them. You obsess over business problems and fall in love with the process of solving them, rather than any particular solution.

You understand problems are not hurdles, but stepping stones towards value creation.

Learn and adapt with the speed of light.

You approach each venture with a white-belt mentality. You are eager to learn and hungry for feedback. You realise the market knows best, and you can turn feedback into value in the blink of an eye.

Humility

You understand that there is nothing you understand. You are humble, and hungry for feedback. You are more defined by the Socratic Paradox than the Dunning-Kruger effect. Hence you are always looking to learn. You approach every day with a white-belt mentality – you can learn something new from anyone or anything, and the market is the ultimate tutor.

Speed of Learning

As a kid, your go-to question was Why? Yep, you’re curious like that. You tend to understand new concepts quickly, and are able to go from lesson learned into action taken rapidly. You are able to form and validate business hypotheses faster than you can say ‘pivot’.

Adaptability

You are relentless about the goal, but flexible about the path to get there. You are known to form your own opinions, and are usually not impressed by, even sceptical of, the status quo. “Strong opinions, loosely held” defines your attitude towards any endeavour.

Execute relentlessly, against all odds

You’re not afraid to put your nose up to the grindstone. As a matter of fact, you kind of enjoy it. You realise execution is what makes great companies, and you’re here to out-execute everyone else.

Bias to action

Your knee-jerk reflex when confronted with a problem is to do something about it, rather than soak in it. You are more comfortable staying busy, than staying at rest. You are not busy for its own sake, however; you understand that work is measured in outputs, not inputs.

Lead from the front

You lead by example, from the trenches, not your high-horse. People respect you for your work-ethic and your willingness to get your hands dirty. For you, that’s just a side-effect of doing what it takes to get the job done.

Leaning-in

You understand pressure creates diamonds and friction polishes them. You actively pursue the hard bits. You lean into the pain. Because you’ve experienced first hand, what’s on the other side of pain. The abyss is a portal to glory.

Background

We look at every founder as an individual (shapes & sizes, remember?). But there are certain signs to tell us how much juice is in the squeeze. Here’s a few factors that will strengthen your case for becoming a founder at Builders.

Founding experience

You’ve built a business before. Even better if you’ve exited one. What better proof that you can build a business, than actually having built one?

High-level consulting / finance

You have proven your chops in the upper echelons of management consulting or finance. It shows grit. Analytical ability. And willingness to execute.

Domain expertise You have a particularly deep expertise in the domain you are pursuing, and you are passionate about it to boot. Bonus points if you have an existing network of experts and potential customers.

Become a Founder

Blockbuster films like The Social Network have somewhat Disney-fied the founder journey. Sure, you can to slap extra emojis on LinkedIn-posts, wear branded swag to parties and flex your pizza box-littered desk on bReal or IG, but that doesn’t make you an entrepreneur.

Instead, it takes enormous ambition, obsessive customer-focus, lightspeed-of-learning and stellar execution.

Think you got what it takes? Apply to become a founder at Builders today!