The many ‘ands’ of a startup founder

As founders ourselves and working with hundreds of other entrepreneurs, we’ve found there are a lot of conflicting skills, principles and characteristics that it helps to have. Here are a few, add your own.

1. Big vision and brutal focus.
2. Deep empathy and benevolent dictatorship.
3. Daily flexibility and arrogant stubbornness.
4. Unending patience and constant change.
5. Respect of the past and belief in the future.
6. Collaborative management and decisive leadership.
7. Left brain creativity and right brain spreadsheet joy.
8. Super lean, frugal cost control and willingness to invest in growth.
9. A love of technology, processes and systems and a love of people, emotions and feelings.
10. Supreme confidence and openly admitting you’re regularly wrong.