High risk appetite

TLDR: Comfort with the uncertainties of a startup compared to a traditional career

Founding a business is one massive risk. There’s a chance you could build the next unicorn, but there’s a much higher chance you’ll fail. 

If there’s one non-negotiable we look for in a founder, it’s a high risk appetite. Founders need to be comfortable with the unknown, open to failing fast, and have enough conviction to push forward with very little certainty around the outcome. This is why we optimise for either experienced founders, or operators from a high growth startup. Someone who’s gone through the ups and downs of building at this early stage will come in with a clear idea of exactly what it takes and whether now’s a good time in their life to take it on.

Timing plays a key role here as well. We’ve met many excellent founders with a proven risk appetite who simply aren’t ready at that moment in life to jump into that environment again. We need to try and understand whether now is the right time to take the leap for any founder. Are they in a position to sacrifice their salary and job security, in return for the potential upside of starting their own business? 

Cat Jones demonstrated a considerable appetite for risk when she founded Byway, a travel business, during COVID. She had an immense conviction in the prospect that, when travel did return to normal, people’s preferences would be more oriented towards sustainable, flight-free travel. It was a real bet on the future of the industry, requiring her to press on full steam ahead while the travel industry ground to a halt. It's a bet which has certainly paid off, seeing the business close £5M in Series A funding in 2024, selling trips across Europe, and successfully delivering on its promise to reduce the carbon impact of travel. 

How do we evaluate?

We look into the story behind past role transitions. Have they been more proactive than reactive, have they driven their career and taken risks? We’ll often ask directly why now is the time to put your financial security on the line. There are many convincing answers, but what we need to see generally is a willingness to sacrifice pay for equity (an incentive to drive the company’s success) and to operate without much of a safety cushion.

When optimising for founding experience (whether as a founder or part of a founding team) we’re looking for someone who’s experienced the hard parts, failed, and learned from this. Are they comfortable with the amount of unknowns at this stage, and already thinking about solutions? Can they act decisively in situations without much information? Essentially, do they know what it takes to scale a business and are ready to face that head on? 

Coachability

TLDR: Humility about the right path and openness to advice & feedback

While we expect founders to have strong convictions about the business they are building and their approach to building it, they should also be open to being coached about certain decisions they’re going to have to make.

One phrase we use a lot when assessing founders is ‘strong opinions, loosely held’. It’s a principle that encapsulates the balance of conviction and coachability very well. Founders should have well-informed, strong opinions that come from their deep understanding and experience of a problem space. At the same time, they must hold these opinions loosely, ready to pivot or adapt based on new data, insights, or advice. This flexibility is crucial in the fast-paced zero-to-one environment.

A coachable founder is not just open to hearing feedback but actively seeks it out. They understand that feedback is a tool for growth, not a personal critique. This openness creates a culture of continuous improvement and learning within their startup, which lays strong foundations for when the company scales operations. There is a balance to strike between humility and confidence. While the founders we look for need the confidence to lead and make bold decisions, they must also possess the humility to recognise when they don’t have all the answers and be willing to seek guidance.

There are some general, known benefits of a coachable founder—quicker iterations, preference for data driven decision-making, continuous learning mindset, etc. 

As a Venture Studio, one of the key advantages we offer is access to a seasoned team, who have built and scaled multiple concepts across different markets, operating models and customer segments. We have a huge amount of collective knowledge, across both success and failure. In any environment, a coachable founder will understand how to leverage an available wealth of knowledge, drawing on diverse perspectives to make better decisions and drive the venture towards success. 

How do we evaluate?

We look for coachability throughout the entire interview process but the most telling is at pitch stage. This is where we ask founders to put together a 20 minute pitch for the Studio Investment. We intentionally pick an area of improvement and give them feedback in the Q&A after the pitch. How a person responds to the feedback is a clear sign of level of coachability. Are they dismissive and defensive, or do they get curious, ask follow up questions and take on a brainstorming approach to how the gap might be filled. 

Adaptability

TLDR: Ability and willingness to wear many hats

The early stage of a company is a period of constant change, iteration, and experimentation. At the beginning, you’ll have to make many big decisions with very little information. As the business grows, you scale with the business, and change your approach. 

To succeed, founders must be extremely attentive to the needs of the business and able to respond to those needs in real time, whether that’s relating to customers, team members, investors, or other stakeholders, all of whom require a slightly different approach. 

Louis Warner, partner at G-Force and former COO at Founders Factory, says: “The capacity to recognise, understand and manage their own emotions—whilst recognising, understanding, and influencing the emotions of others—is one of the most important attributes we see in top founders. They can gauge the tone of a conversation well, and adapt their own style and messaging quickly to achieve the best outcome for themselves or their business.”

In the day-to-day, any founder will need to be a wearer of multiple hats, and to excel at this type of context switching. In a broader sense, adaptability means the founder will also need to grow in parallel to the growth of the company. This is a challenge of the ‘Founder & CEO’ role, as the two are quite different roles. We’re looking for someone who can lead a company through its full life cycle, moving from being a scrappy startup founder who does everything, to more of an executive focused on strategy, macro perspective, and leading high-performing teams. 

Scan.com's Charlie Bullock describes his own journey as a CEO & co-founder of one of Europe’s fastest growing startups. “My role as CEO has changed a lot. I’m trying to get comfortable with letting go of day-to-day tasks, things like sales or product, which I love, but hiring great people to take on these tasks makes this a lot easier. Really, it’s about finding areas where I can add maximum value to the overall business. And all too often, this involves finding time to not do anything and just think.” 

How do we evaluate?

One ideal founder archetype is the operator who's experienced hypergrowth—scaling from seed to growth in a successful startup. If you’ve seen (and ideally led) the whole lifecycle of a company, odds are you’ve had to make that transition from scrappy early-stage founder to strategic leader and will be better set up to do so again. In our Studio, we’ve recently hired founders who’ve held leadership positions at the likes of Revolut, Monzo, Thriva Health, and Plum.

Deep domain expertise is important, but we’re ultimately after a generalist with a T-shaped skill set, someone who will have a perspective on multiple functions of the business. In the pitch, we’re looking more for an actionable zero-to-one plan than for a big vision. What will they do in the first week, the first month, the first 6 months? Are they open to experimenting, testing, and making changes when necessary? 

IQ and EQ Balance

TLDR: Smart, empathetic, people-centred

There’s a certain intelligence that we look for when we invest in founders—something that demonstrates a formidable understanding about a certain problem, and will help them stand out in the space. But this has to be balanced with an emotional intelligence, and in particular an ability to empathise. 

Ultimately, understanding a problem from the inside out means putting yourself in the shoes of the person experiencing it. To be a founder you must deeply care about the audience/users you’re building for, able to listen to them and grasp their pain points, giving you the right level of insight to find a solution for their problem.

This ability to empathise of course also applies to team members. Going back to magnetism, founders need to be excellent leaders, someone that people want to work with and succeed for, and this requires a strong sense of empathy, humanity, and self-awareness. Creating a solid company culture is critical in an early stage venture - where the team is in it less for the money and more for the big vision, growth opportunity, potential for real impact, and the chance to work in a dynamic environment  with high-calibre people. Great founders are people who play the infinite game, rather than the finite one. 

Radical feedback culture is a big part of this. As leaders, founders should not only be able to give empathetic, constructive feedback, they should be actively seeking it themselves, looking for data which helps them grow, improve, and become better versions of themselves.

For a business managing the health of elderly family members abroad, trust is non-negotiable. Nila founder Anthony Jacob grasped the importance of compassion in the company mission, building a founding team who brings the same level of care for that mission as he does. Through empathy for cultural background and personal experience, Anthony and the Nila team have fostered connections to their customer base - Indians living abroad taking care of family back home - through time and effort taken to understand their needs, which continues to pay off in customer testimonials. 

How do we evaluate?

When assessing EQ, there are many indicators in the way someone speaks, both about others and about themselves. Looking at the way they talk about people: is investing in their team a number one priority, and have they nurtured talent in the past? Can they put themselves into the shoes of their potential customers, and have examples of doing so?

Regarding self-awareness, we pay attention to how they talk about failure: are they open and reflective, and willing to take responsibility? We may ask questions like “What characteristics would you look for in a co-founder that would compliment your own?” or “Tell me about someone you’ve worked with who you admire, and why?”, which often help paint a better picture of how someone sees themselves and how conscious they are of their own strengths and gaps.