This guest post was written by Sara Thomas, Principal at Maven Ventures. Follow Sara on Twitter @saraannet.
Earlier this month, we held our second annual Maven Ventures Holiday Party, and it was great to welcome the holiday season with our Maven community — the Maven team, founders, limited partners, mentors, and many other friends and supporters. It was so great to bring everyone together for a fun night. My Maven teammates and I are thankful to work with such a quality group. When we debriefed after the event, we couldn’t help but notice that one of the reasons everyone had a great time was that the room was full of good people. That’s by design. It’s part of our Maven culture and values to work with good people. We shared a post earlier this year about what we look for in a team; here are the specific characteristics we look for in a founder:
- Passionate: willing to spend 10+ years of their life working on this problem
- Technical: has the technical abilities to build and scale the product
- Coachable: open to new perspectives and advice
- Driven and Persistent: is competitive and has a burning desire to win
- Fundraiser: has the ability to convey the business opportunity to investors and get them excited to support it
- Recruiter: can inspire other A-players to join the team
- Communicator: can articulate the company’s vision and is a compelling storyteller
- Likable: we’ll be excited to spend a significant amount of time with this person over the next several years
- Humble: has the humility to lead a team and weather ups and downs
- Transparent: shares the good and the bad news openly and tells the “real story”
- Expert: has background knowledge that puts him/her in a better position in his/her domain to succeed