Curiosity and the reluctant founder

June 3, 2020
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Continuous learning is one of the themes that keeps coming up in my recent Talks with Petri –podcast discussions.

Probably, it’s my selection bias but still, it’s interesting that the common nominator seems to be curiosity. People mention it themselves so it is an important theme to them.

Playfulness and ever questions how things work and why things are the way they are result in them to find interesting unexpected outcomes and segways to new things and discoveries.

The old saying that the best startups are not founded by entrepreneurs but by ideas that have found the founders may hold some truth in it. In many cases, the problems are there just waiting for someone to apply the right solutions to them.

And for you to find them you need to turn enough stones or run into them. This rarely happens if you’re sitting at home on your sofa and thinking about things. You increase the chances by doing something that interests you.

Often, the motivation comes from frustration. You start to do something and realise that it’s hard or difficult to do something. Yet, you want to accomplish your goal and therefore you start to figure out the ways to solve the issue.

Suddenly, you start to find more people who are into the same problem and have already figured out part of the solution. This leads to a niche and in some cases to co-founders that start to solve the issue together for others.

Another theme seems to be the view that the successful founders are hesitant to start their company. They may even dislike the idea and really hate it. It’s the necessary evil for accomplishing the desired outcome.

I wonder whether a reluctant (and grumpy) founder is an early indicator of a potentially successful business case.