I’ve become an avid reader of many blogs and happened upon an interesting post by
…a typical founder during a sales call with a prospective client of his early-stage business.
Founder: “Hi, this is John Doe. I’m the founder of Daytime Dummies and would like to introduce an innovative new business concept to you.”
Potential buyer: “Ok, what is Daytime Dummies?”
Founder: “Thanks for your time! Daytime Dummies is a first-of-its-kind approach to outsourcing all of those office hour non-essential tasks. Such as refilling the water cooler, picking up the dry cleaning and re-stocking the copier.”
Potential buyer: “Hmmm, how does it work?”
Founder: “Well, for starters, I’m the founder. So let me begin by telling you where this unique concept originated…”
Buyer: Sound of keyboard typing overheard
Founder: “Are you still there?”
Click! End of call.
Every founder has been in a similar situation at one time or another. In the early stages of a company, it’s all about our vision, executing the business plan, finding investors and customers. Not necessarily in that order. Whether you’re trying to sell the newest widget or tailored service, what I call the Founder’s Syndrome is all too common. By this I mean that singular, almost narcissistic focus on our idea and our responsibility for making it fly. And who can blame us? We must be this focused to succeed, right? In a sense it is all about us and our vision. But here’s a newsflash.
Visions are useless unless transferred to those paying the bills or those who can help you generate customers who will pay the bills. The ability to craft a commercial vision is what makes a founder, a founder. The ability to promote the vision and transfer it to others–to make it grow into a commercial value proposition–is what defines a good leader. The balance between founder and leader is often so out of kilter that it’s hard to distinguish where the vision-concept ends and vision-value proposition begins.
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Another timely example is Jerry Yang at Yahoo!. Can this founder return to being a leader? Only time will tell. Perhaps the hippest and most famous co-founders, the Google guys, had this balance down awhile back when they brought in Eric Schmidt to help run things. They let go of the me-driven vision enough to allow a professional manager in to help realize the value proposition. Never hurts to have a truly experienced hand on board.
Mere mortal founders need to straddle the fence between our own vision and promoting it, spreading it in the form of something that the marketplace will value. Jobs figured this out eventually, making him one of the most iconic business leaders in history.
Please, oh please… i hope that i can be a good leader!
It ain’t purty, but it sure do work Dept.
Also, came across a non-sexy, yet information rich example of a group of Providers (healthcare organizations) collaborating to offer consumers some fantastic, peer-reviewed clinical information. Nice job and a hat-tip to the leaders at University of Cincinnati, Case Western Reserve University, The Ohio State University. I was (as you will be) pretty impressed by this group’s netwellness.org offering. I didn’t say it was pretty, nor easy to wade thru and find relevant information – but the quality of the information and resources was first-class.