Analytical Strengths or a Visionary Halo - What’s More Important for Startups Success?
“You have to get beyond what you want to do, and beyond what you think you ought to do, and only then can you see the clear light that shows you what to do.”
It is known that vision-led founders and teams perform better. On the macro, more abstract level, an authentic vision is a manifestation of one’s ‘spirit’. Individuals who are led by it feel that they represent something bigger and more important than their immediate own needs, and teams who are characterised by having a ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ and a clear shared vision experience stronger feelings of meaning and belonging. ‘Spiritually intelligent’ startups are better able to surpass obstacles, to be more creative and agile than others and to move far faster than them.
From the other side of the table, to be research-oriented means to be rooted in and count on ‘objective’ information, data and analytics and to rely upon these in decision making. Successful startup founders are mostly characterised by strong research skills; they are curious, autodidactic and have a profound knowledge of their business environment as a whole. When they plan or approach a problem, they rely not only on their solid domain knowledge, but also on fresh data-based insights they’ve collected themselves, usually from more than one source. These people, by the way, stand out a mile to experienced investors and are highly appreciated by them.
In startups, both approaches need to co-exist. This requirement is not paradoxical – on the contrary – these seemingly contradictory approaches actually feed each other and improve each other’s ‘quality’.
Relying on data and analytics makes our spirit stronger. It helps us to be more accurate with our ‘gut feeling’ and to channel our entrepreneurial instincts into the correct, timely and successful directions. On the other hand, having a lucid vision frames our mission’s borders and provides us with a clearer context in which we can operate freely and creatively. Being connected to our spirit helps us to make decisions even while having some missing pieces in the puzzle (a common problem in early stage startups). It enables us to empower our rational decision-making with intuition and to boost our innovativeness.
This co-existence of contradictions has become a must for successful entrepreneurs, especially in the past decade. That means that we need more and more ‘ambidextrous’ founders who are able to think in terms of ‘both’/’and’, rather than the in the old-economy binary way. On the ‘team’ level, it will probably turn out to be that successful companies are those who have a noticeable authentic spirit and remarkable data-oriented working ethics. These companies will be probably the ones to successfully navigate through the tumultuous, contradictory and hyper-fast business environment of our times.
By Keren Beit-Cohen
Inventor of the 3P Model for Startup Assessment and Business Development (2014)
Founder CEO at VÖR, Investment Intelligence Platform for Startups
Business intelligence and pre-investment startup assessment expert in the Israeli and EU ecosystems.