The resilience mode of the founder, from 0–1 to scaling stage.

Hello everyone, I hope you enjoy the weekend. Today I will not introduce any framework or strategy but I am going to provide you with casual, yet crucial topic, related to directing and leading the team in particular for Startup life….that is

How the role of the founder looks like at each stage of Startup?

Often time we are focused to talk about the action or process for startup to manage how to find product-market fit and make sure that the burn rate is not risky for your startup’s survival. Ensure how to attract the investors, VCs with traction and pitch — How about shifting toward the topic of leader. The startup ability to jump from each phase to the next phase requires strong team and undeniably strong leadership. Now, let’s take a look how the ideal leadership traits at each stage of the startup.

0–1 Phase ( Pre-seed stage)

🏃‍♂️Welcome to startup life, the 0–1 phase is the one of the toughest phase I would say because >90% of startups fail at this phase. The founders have a big mission to thrive for PMF (product market fit) which have to dealing with the important factors of :-

• Team — recruit the limited no. of team member with expertise to get the job done and shows high passion and belief of the value of the product. People with strong expertise is good, but without passionate feeling towards the product he/she is building will end up quitting since it requires the strong driver and dedication to build the product and the startup is at unstable status and risky whether they can move to the next phase, so design an attractive first employee benefit if the company grows is one of the task the founder has to do.
• Market is scaling — select the potential market to generate tractions to that market. If the target market you are tackle is not growing market — how can your solution will sustain over period of time?
• Timing — Under the VUCA world, the globalization and power of the technology, competitors are everywhere. The founder evaluates that the market is ready for your solution, not too early for the target user to understand how your service offer value to them. Next thing is to make sure the team has the speed to introduces to the target market quickly to win the 1st customer and found PMF.

Since they have to ensure all the areas are managed properly, the founder is undoubt requires to be “CEO— Chief Everything Officer”.

1–10 Phase (Post seed stage — Investment Series A-B)

🎉Congrats! When your startup can overcome previous phase, it’s to redo the workstyle, establish the responsible team and process in much more systematic manner. The founder still requires to observe and supervise the team lead to get the job done for the team. It is a step-up from doing everything to be a “coach” to the head of each team.

The leader at this stage became “Chief Architecture” to design the process and a “Coach”.

10–100 Phase

🍾 Now this is the phase you are scaling, expanding the business and team to run and operate the business smoothly while maintain to generate the revenue. You are not selling the product but building a company to sell the product.

• Culture — The more people, the more energy & ability to get things done, but also more problem to come. The thing that is important and powerful with ability to empower a large group of people is “culture”. Create the company culture is important to founder because it plays a huge factor for recruiting the right people. The culture acts as a talent magnet besides good pay or cool offices.

Culture
is a shared way of doing things —set of behaviors “core value” or principle that endure. It is not a thing you can see the effect in short-term, It embeds inside the company. Perhaps define the 3-5 core values for the company.
by Brian Chesky, Founder of Airbnb https://youtu.be/RfWgVWGEuGE

• Recruiting — recruiting the new join is more intense than previous phase. The head of HR is doing the recruiting instead of the founder. At this phase, the company looks at the candidate not only the qualification of the hard skills but also to filter the candidate if he/she will fit to the company culture because the employee is going to reflect how they work in the company and deliver the value to customer.
• Strategy and vision — set the vision to define company’s direction in the long-term and create the strategies to execute the actions to pursue the goal. When clear mission is deliver to entire company, not only to the manager-level, but all employees, will drive their actions towards it.

Have a team of missionaries, not mercenaries. Mercenaries build whatever they’re told to build. Missionaries are true believers in the vision and are committed to solving problems for their customers.
By Cagan, Marty. Inspired (Silicon Valley Product Group) (p. 33)

The leader at this stage became “Chief Visionary Officer” , “Chief culture”, and “coach of coaches”.

To sum up, the founder’s role will be varier during different phase of entire startup life til the expansion to build a company.

0–1 Phase: Chief Everything Officer. No need to have long vision but build the passion and the team to validate of PMF.

1–10 Phase: Chief Architecture to design the process more systematic and a coach to supervise team lead.

10–100 Phase: Chief Visionary Officer, Chief culture, and coach of coaches. Empower the company culture and set direction to company vision while coaching the coaches.

The reference of this article came from the talks of “Perspective TV shows” with Managing director of KBTG and a startup godfather in Thailand, Mr. Krating Poonpol. ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHL82C67C64