Founders, stop negatively impacting your growth
6 founder types that hold back growth
Hi there,
I’ve gotten to work with a lot of founders. And they’re all brilliant.
They have the guts to start their own businesses, with energy and vision, often starting out all on their own.
Honestly, hats off to them, I think it’s incredible.
But, and sorry there is a respectful but to this.
The skills that help them succeed can also be their Achilles heel.
I’ve seen that endless energy causes them to do things that slow growth down, or other ways of working negatively impact growth.
Here are five common founder mistakes I see that result in growth slowing down.
1. The YES Founder
Ah, the founder who says yes to everything: new features, platforms, channels, etc. The result? Being stretched too thin, doing a bit of everything but nothing well.
It’s hard to expect your team to say no constantly so the best way to channel that excitement: have a structured backlog for all those ideas to prioritise together (or regular brainstorm sessions).
2. The Everything Founder
This founder wears too many hats. They had to in the beginning, but as the startup has scaled, trying to do everything has lead to quite a few things not doing well.
It’s okay to need or ask for help, but waiting too long can be detrimental to your growth. For example, hiring someone for customer care rather than trying to do it all yourself and missing tickets can go a long way in building a loyal customer base in the long run.
3. The Panic Founder
You are or recognise this founder by one crucial question:
"Why are orders down today?"
This is dangerous as it leads to time-wasting:
Trying to explain flucuations in metrics
Focusing on what might not even be the most important metric
Trying to monitor every single metric to prevent these reactions
But to ignore it also feels scary... What if the team misses it? What if it is a major issue?
To get out of panic mode try to look instead at:
How long has the change occurred for?
Is there a trend? Does this metric usually fluctuate?
When is the right time to bring it up?
4. The Creative Flow Founder
Where was the document you mentioned last week? Remember I sent you that example a few weeks ago?
This founder lacks a structured system for things. They lack processes and documentation as they go with the creative flow and ideas, sharing things with the team on three different communication channels and all over the place.
This leads to time that should be growth-focused instead being spent chasing emails, trying to find key documents or data, etc. Something as simple as specific Slack channels for ideas or documenting key processes can go a long way to helping your team
5. The Feature Founder
This founder focuses on features over customer benefits. It’s natural, they know the features of their products inside and out and are proud of them. But features are tools that provide benefits, so it’s important to think of and describe your product in terms of the actual benefits your customers want to ensure you’re communicating your value properly.
6. The Optimising Founder
Rather than looking at the bigger picture and testing something completely different, they get caught up in small optimisations. This can stem from two main causes: 1. It being your baby and you don’t want to see the slightest detail wrong, 2. The big changes feel scary. But they are what move you forward. And sadly things will break as you move fast and you need to accept that at times.
Try challenging yourself to work out the impact of the ideas and areas, what is really the priority?
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Recommendation
As a founder you don’t need be a growth expert at all. But having the basic understanding of growth can go a long way to avoid these unhelpful founder modes.
I’ve recently created a growth strategy course that will give you that crucial knowledge, it’s 10 hours and covers everything to help you start understanding building a stronger growth strategy.
I can offer 10% off a subscription to my audience so definitely check it out:
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As a founder myself, I have to challenge myself not to fall into these traps (especially trying not to be a YES founder). But as a founder, your priority often is growth, so the best founders challenge themselves in these areas and work hard to avoid these common pitfalls.
HIt reply to let me know if you’ve ever seen any of these six challenges at play,
Daphne