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Are You Startup Founder Material?

Just like how a toddler displays certain skill sets fit for a particular line of work while he’s playing in his playpen or sandbox, people often display startup founder material even in the little things they do. How about you? Are you startup founder material?

 

Are you…

 

An Ideation Specialist?

So you think out of the box – or maybe you don’t even think it’s a box at all. That’s a big thing, because startups are focused on an idea that – when developed into a business strategy – will become a viable, continuous source of success. Your ideas don’t just span solutions to existing problems but add convenience where it’s needed and even find the problems in the first place. It’s sort of like developing services people didn’t know they needed.

 

box

 

But that’s not to say you’re creating trivialities. Your ideation process simply covers everything from the problem to the solution to the model to the delivery, and of course, the value of the idea in and of itself.

 

A Problem Solver?

Half of the time a startup is growing an idea into a proper business, the other half of the time it is people are trying to solve problems that pop up along the way. When you see a problem, do you aim to solve it once and forget it, or do you dig deeper to check that you fix the source of the problem and not create a repeating pattern of problem-solution?

 

Do you see problems as setbacks or opportunities? This may sound cliché, but each problem is a brand new possibility to at least learn how to avoid the same problem next time.

 

Pressure Suave?

Say you’re at home putting the baby to sleep and the phone rings, someone’s at the door, and your laundry air-drying in your backyard is about to get wet from pending rain. What do you do? How you manage your priorities and what you do to take immediate action will define how successful your action steps are.

 

In a startup, several different things are happening at once. Aside from prioritizing major campaigns or development agendas, you also need to see if you can take low lying fruits along the way.

 

Can you perhaps answer the phone and resolve the call while carrying the baby? Can you do it on the way to answering the door? How you handle pressure is how you handle your startup.

 

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Gifted with Entrepreneurial Spirit?

You may have a lot of ideas, but are you thinking of just ideas or the process of growing an idea into a sustainable business model? Cool tricks and half-solutions do not amount to decent business models. This is where your entrepreneurial spirit and insight comes into play.

 

If you only have insight, however, and not the drive to apply these insights even in the least obvious of situations, then you don’t have entrepreneurial spirit. The motivation and the passion paired with the knowhow is the trigger to growth.

 

Progress-Oriented?

Startups are always on the uphill, always trying to keep alive, and always trying to keep ahead, even barely. Unlike established corporations, when we say you need to be progress-oriented as a startup founder, we mean you need to always think how to rapidly deploy or grow exponentially. You need to see the big picture and the smaller steps toward it. Where progress for corporations is measured in numbers staying where they are, progress in a startup is made evident by the fact that it hasn’t gone belly-up just yet.

 

These traits paint a harsh, cruel, but also exciting and fulfilling role for startup founders. And that’s the truth of it. If you think you have these traits, you just might be startup founder material.

 

This article was contributed by the team at CompareHero.my, the most comprehensive financial comparison service in Malaysia. Compare credit cards, broadband plan, and others at a competitive price.

 

Photo Credits

davidd | Marco Bellucci

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