This week’s podcast features a NotebookLM-generated podcast that combines Henrik Asklövs bachelor’s Thesis - What kind of people become startup founders: exploration into the grassroots levels of entrepreneurship and my previous writing on Nordic Notes hosted by the Startup Foundation soon to be previous CEO Josefina Kotilainen, as she’s working on something new.
Henrik Asklöf is currently the Community Director at Startup Sauna, the local startup community hub and home of Aaltoes, among other student-led endeavors that have brought Slush, the world's most founder-focused event, to life. In addition to his work at Startup Sauna, he’s been completing his bachelor’s at Aalto University School of Business. I recruited Henrik and his former team at DASH (a design hackathon that is one of the student-led endeavors) to help with an event project for BOU (marketing agency) a few years back. The following is the Abstract of his work, including its conclusions.
This thesis explores the internal and external factors that influence individuals to become startup founders, focusing on Finland's student-led entrepreneurial ecosystem. The research integrates a comprehensive literature review with qualitative interviews of 16 founders involved in these ecosystems. The findings reveal that traits such as curiosity, robust social networks, the ability to handle uncertainty, and other strongly associated traits with startup founders are notably prevalent among those who were previously engaged in student-led entrepreneurship and subsequently became startup founders.
If you want to read the whole study, contact Henrik on LinkedIn! His work combines the following writing that first appeared in Nordic Notes #3 by
. It’s been revised a bit, with a few present reflections in between:Nicolas Dolenc strives to inspire action and help individuals, teams, and organizations be their best. He draws his knowledge from various sources, including working at organizations like Smartly and Slush. You can read more of his thoughts on his Medium blog.
Present Self: I hoped to start writing on Substack out of Medium. To make a point, I deleted everything from the internet that I had written up until the release of my book (Answers to Love, Life, and Leadership in an AI-driven world). Unlike books you can burn, deleting everything is not straightforward, as my blog linked above still exists on the “Wayback Machine.” Here’s my last masterpiece created on Medium. Furthermore, my mission is “curing loneliness,” as Just Thoughts #2 explained.
Ben Horowitz is known for establishing CEO founders who are 1s and 2s in his book Hard Things About Hard Things. 1s enjoy setting the company's direction, and 2s enjoy getting the company to perform. CEOs need both skills, but they rarely come in the same package, which results in Co-founders or Executive team members dealing with the part that the CEO founder doesn't like or is a weakness.
Horowitz's model is simple, but one could use a slightly more nuanced model than that. Why would there be a need for something more elaborate? The white paper Slush released last year, "Entrepreneurship Redefined," discusses the need for companies and founders that drive purpose-driven change. Combine this notion with Fredrik Laloux's qualitative studies of organizations that have driven purpose-driven change for decades and chosen to operate very differently from conventional means. Laloux dictates that the only common denominator for an organization to work in such a way is the CEO or owners' belief that it is possible to create such organizations. Hence, Horowitz's one & two model doesn't help us identify the founders that can build such organizations.
Present Self: People still seem to think purpose and profit are mutually exclusive endeavors, and that purpose needs to be about saving the planet. To me, it’s always been about aligning the essence of the business with doing something that strives for a net positive impact on society, humanity, and the environment. I believe even a bank or a hedgefun can be purpose-driven.
After watching a Slush 2019 interview with Kristo Ovaska (CEO & founder of Smartly.io) and Miki Kuusi (CEO & founder of Wolt), I got the inspiration for the model discussed above. During the interview, the CEOs elaborate on their approaches to building your product: building it to serve your own needs (and those like you), making it to suit the needs of others, and building it to realize a vision for (hopefully) what you think is a better future. As someone who has worked closely with these Juggernauts and their teams, I felt the discussion still lacked what I like to call the "ego drivers." Ego drivers are something Derek Lido (author of Startup Leadership) covers well in his HBR article "Before you start your business, listen to your ego.". To simplify what Derek discusses, you could categorize the ego drivers in the following way: the desire to be rich, the desire to be king (appreciate the model needs a more gender-neutral label here, need help, so please suggest), and the desire to make a change. Here's my proposition:
Present Self: Since the time of writing, I’ve spent quite some time working with DEI professionals, and I’d change “King” to “Monarch” in this model, and the “One-man show” is likely bettered label “Solo Show” (without intending to do a Star Wars reference). Reflecting on the model and what Just Thoughts have become as a project, we’re likely in the Influencer category, as I’ve only raised about 1k€ for this project so far.
This model intends not to judge or say you wouldn't be able to build a financially sound business or a product that wouldn't be successful if you weren't in the top right corner. It's an initial step to create a framework to discuss what the company and the founders need to do to move themselves and their team toward the top right. Startup stakeholders could also use it to honestly examine the founders' reasons for creating their product and company.
Additionally, this model may help find suitable types of intervention for founder syndrome or even prevent it from manifesting. Furthermore, it may also serve as a model for discussing what talent you can attract to the company or should try to recruit. In other words, with whom does the founder's true intent and source of inspiration resonate so they are willing to join the founders' journey?
Present Self: It’s been a while since I wrote this piece, and based on this year’s (2024) Slush Startup survey discussed by the startup ministers podcast episode “Startup Struggle Reveals Startup Entrepreneurs' Most Significant Pain Points” (Podcast Hosted by Timo Ahopelto, partner at Lifeline Ventures, and Jyri Engeström, Partner at YesVC & Lifeline), there may be a negative bias towards building because you want to get rich, but as my model depicts, that doesn’t need to mutually exclusive to building something that drives change.
However, this model combines a series of thoughts after spending almost a decade surrounded by startup founders and their companies in the cradle of the Helsinki startup scene. It has little scientific backing, like Spiral Dynamics, a model for the evolutionary development of individuals, teams, and organizations. Spiral Dynamics may be better suited to identifying the type of founders that can create purpose-driven companies or just generally “system thinkers,” as Harry Stebbings (podcaster turned VC) said when describing what kind of founders he is looking for in his newly raised record-breaking fund. Additionally, Spiral dynamics may help founders evolve their thinking and the organization to the highest level of beneficial impact the organization can make.
What do you think of this 9-grid model? Can you categorize the founders you know based on this model?
Present Self: Here’s where Henrik’s work aligns nicely with this previous piece of writing. Even if I’ve personally spent a lot of time around entrepreneurs, I haven’t done a scientific study of them, and his bachelor thesis is a good start when it comes to codifying what makes the environment and the community great at breeding entrepreneurs and founders. Combine this work with the previous writing on how to build ecosystems described in Just Thoughts #25 and Just Thoughts #27, and you’ll likely have a pretty good framework and map for explaining it.
As a final reflection on what kind of entrepreneur you want to become and what kind of entrepreneurial endeavor suits you, we need to remember that the political- and societal climate for entrepreneurship plays a significant role in shaping future founders. We need to understand the biases that play for or against us, and we need to be politically tactical when need be.
That is why the work of Andreas Klinger's initiative, Eu Inc, is paramount in shaping the future of technology in Europe. As discussed on the Slush stage, Martin Mignot summarized and put it into an American perspective Martin Mignot (Partner at Index Ventures) in his post on LinkedIn.
If the entrepreneurial grassroots ecosystem has achieved one thing, it’s making entrepreneurship a viable and desirable career option. The day Slush started, only a few of hundreds of university students could think of themselves as entrepreneurs; today, anywhere you go, more than half can see themselves as entrepreneurs.
Even if entrepreneurship remains the fastest way to change the world, there are times when politics plays a significant role in hindering or enabling entrepreneurship. China has seen a collapse in startup investments due to geopolitical tension and political stance, whereas Norwegian politicians have made it utterly unattractive to be an entrepreneur in Norway.
When listening to Andreas Klinger’s private presentation for Slush alumni, I couldn’t help but think that the next time I start a company, I will only do it if I can do it as an EU Inc., so it better happen sooner rather than later.
Until the next podcast! Next week, we’ll use NotebookLM to summarize all leadership, feedback- and team performance frameworks in audio format!
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