A number of factors can contribute to a startup’s success, including its innovative nature, the quality and speed of its setup and growth, and good talent management. But an international research team believes that the personality of the founder(s) may also influence potential for success.
This theory emerged years ago, when entrepreneurship began to become an object of academic study. However, from the mid-1980s onwards, researchers preferred an approach that focused more on situational factors – financing, professional network, location, and so forth.
Now, it has come back into the spotlight, most recently in a paper published in the journal “Scientific Reports”. The research suggests that startup founders have distinct personality traits that could play a decisive role in the success of an innovative company.
To come to this conclusion, the researchers used machine-learning software to analyse the behaviour and speech patterns of numerous startup founders, based on their accounts on the X social network (formerly Twitter). This algorithm was able to identify the most successful startup founders with an accuracy of 82.5%.
The academics then compared these personality profiles with data from the specialist website Crunchbase, to determine whether they might relate to a startup’s chances of success.
This methodology highlighted the fact that there isn’t just one typical profile for a startup founder – but six. These are:
- the fighter;
- the operator;
- the accomplisher;
- the leader;
- the engineer; and
- the developer.
While these profiles differ from one another, they are based on certain dominant personality traits. For example, the study authors state that successful startup founders appreciate novelty and starting new things, which makes them want to embark on different projects. They also like to be the centre of attention and to behave in an exuberant way.
“The higher presence of certain personality traits in founders are related to higher chances of success,” study co-author Fabian Braesemann of the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, stressed.
Nevertheless, the findings should be treated with caution: a company founder’s qualities alone do not predict their chances of success in the business world. The researchers are well aware of this, and even encourage startup founders to partner with entrepreneurs whose personality traits differ from their own.
“While all startups are high-risk, the risk becomes lower with more founders, particularly if they have distinct personality traits,” said Paul McCarthy, study lead author and adjunct professor at UNSW Sydney.
“Largely founding a startup is a team sport, and now we can see clearly that having complementary personalities in the foundation team has an outsized impact on the venture’s likelihood of success, which we’ve termed the Ensemble Theory of Success.”
According to the researchers, this theory also applies to the business world. As such, managers and human resources executives would do well to create teams where employees have different, albeit complementary, profiles.