Iโve seen it โ and maybe you have too.
A first-time founder with no real-world experience. Barely out of college. Suddenly with a title, a teamโฆ and an ego that fills the room.
The traits show up fast: โข Disrespecting senior team members because they โworked in legacy setupsโ โข Dismissing advice as โnot startup enoughโ โข Micromanaging roles they donโt understand โข Believing raising money = validation โข Telling domain experts how to do their job โ without ever having done it
โธป
Hereโs the truth:
Having a vision doesnโt mean you have wisdom. Owning a cap table doesnโt mean you own the culture. Being a founder doesnโt automatically make you a leader.
โธป
The most toxic founders arenโt the ones who fail fast.
Theyโre the ones who: โข Build ego faster than product โข Reject feedback before understanding it โข And confuse hype with leadership
Write the name of such egoist founder you have worked with and regret.
Is it zepto you are talking about?
Hmmm, lets see.....what other startups have college kids straight out of college with an idea that clicked
I am from Zepto and both founders respect seasoned leaders here very much. They listen to them but also drive and push them. They set the vision but the way itโs realised is completed upto functional heads. Seasoned leaders canโt be taken for a ride, if the founders act foolish theyโll leave. Most business and ops leaders have been here for more than 18 months (thatโs half our age ๐ )
While you are fair in your assessment as an employee, as a founder you kind of have to be a d*ck more often than not. It's an unsaid requirement of sorts.
Humility gets you nowhere, because if you have enough humility, you'll never believe you can compete with or win against giant incumbents in any space. You'll get absolutely crushed in negotiations and in the market if you are meek.
The challenge is to really know yourself and your work to be able to have enough confidence that keeps your ego at a healthy enough level that you don't actively repel people. You still have to work well with others, can't be d*ck all the time and to everyone. It's more challenging than one would think.
Entrepreneurship also evokes a survivalist mindset which is tough to manage, especially for founders who don't have financial security. Much like ego, it is a double edged sword. People think you might be ruthless when you're just trying to ensure your survival. An employee with a paycheck and job security has no idea what it means to not know how to be able to pay your bills because of cash crunches and random variables outside your control.
Micromanaging multiple things all day is what founders have to do to be able to learn, iterate, develop SOPs over time and keep refining them for efficiency. That means questioning everything and everyone.
Every founder is a bad founder at some point or another in their life, they are human too and it's just part of the process. Sometimes those mistakes can end up costing the business. This is why most people can't be founders or fail at it.
Totally get where youโre coming from โ the survival mindset is real, especially in early-stage startups where youโre juggling chaos, cash crunches, and uncertainty all at once.
But I think thatโs exactly why self-awareness matters even more.
You donโt need to be meek. You need to be sharp, decisive โ and still respectful. Confidence and humility arenโt opposites โ they coexist in the best founders.
Micromanaging, bulldozing, or dismissing experience might feel like โtaking control,โ but over time, itโs what slows companies down, burns teams out, and creates cultures people leave.
Iโm all for intensity. But intensity with empathy โ thatโs where real leadership shows up.
Appreciate your detailed perspective โ this is the kind of conversation that should happen more often.
All of them not specific. Almost 95% of these type if founders are doing this .
So many haha zepto, indmoney, ola, kredit bee, fun fact is almost all of them have a mature partner who leads or business backing with family support so all of them have such a narrowed down perspective
One trait common across all is rightly pointed by you - micromanaging not to better things but simply to feel good about themselves being better where they want to prove everyone wrong by putting them down and disrespecting them just to compensate for their insecurity
Sorry but You havenโt reached to that stage where this starts happening. Although, u are already trying to boast that u had to go out in sun to help your gig workers as if they are building a business and you are helping them. Try to understand that u r building something for yourself and itโs your basic job to go out there in the field and validate the idea.
Change in strategies on the fly, leading all departments including Sales, Tech, Finance. Having the shiny new toy syndrome where you get bored of the older people and threaten them with job losses, pay cuts and then find someone new to get along. F***ing hell.
In one of my product design interviews with a young CPO of a fintech startup, he tells me weโre expecting you to write PRDs for devs, create and assign JIRA tickets, analyse data along with managing day to day design tasks, and because youโve been working with a โstableโ company like paytm you must be out of touch with these aspects of product development. BTW, he mentions this multiple times during the interview.
To which my response was, of course youโre right, we have dedicated resources for all other tasks here and my job is to focus on design but all of that youโve mentioned is not rocket science. Iโve done it all in my past startup experience and I can do it all again.
The interview ended with him telling me about next steps if things go right. Next day I receive a canned rejection email.
Unacademy guy was known for these traits.
I started up straight in my final year of engineering college last year, had to shut down last month and now looking for a full time job, had even raised funding and I'll tell you what, i never build any kind of ego, in fact i had hired two gig workers for on field activities ( we were validating different ideas) and there were times i left my centralized cooling workplace cabin to be out in the sun on the ground helping then when needed all while i had placement offers from Amazon but decided not to join.
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