A startup lives or dies based on the founder's leadership.
Exited founders know exactly what that looks like.
We're gathering leadership lessons from exited founders and turning them into a free resource for early stage founders about to face the same challenges.
Very few are about the person leading it.
Early stage founders starting on the exciting journey of building a business have access to brilliant resources to help them as they grow. There are tools and communities to help them refine their idea, build a product, find their first customers and pitch for funding.
But there isn't so much out there to help them grow as leaders. And leadership is one of the most important things they'll need to make their business successful.
Exited founders have so much knowledge and wisdom about the leadership traits they found most helpful and the things they wish they'd known earlier. We're talking to as many as possible to capture that, then distilling the main lessons into a report for early stage founders to help them understand what leadership skills they'll need and be better prepared for what's ahead.
The conversations
Thirty minute coffee chats with exited founders to capture their leadership lessons and what they wish they'd known earlier.
Finding the themes
Consolidating the responses to identify the patterns, the things that keep coming up, and the insights that matter most.
The report
Producing a report that distills the key lessons for early stage founders, with practical context on how to address what comes up.
Making the report available to download for free
Sharing it with founder communities, accelerators, universities and VCs so it reaches the people who need it most.
Are you an exited founder?
If you founded a startup in Australia or New Zealand and exited it, I'd love to capture your insights for this project. No matter how you exited (sold for big bucks, IPO'd, quietly wound it down or quit in a k-drama worthy walkout) I'm building a diverse set of learnings from people who've had different experiences, in different industries, in different locations and with different founding teams. Your lessons can really help the next generation of early stage founders go in with their eyes open.
If you're an exited founder interested in contributing, send me your details and I'll be in touch.
Not an exited founder but interested in the project?
Sign up to stay in the loop. I'll share updates on how the project is progressing, quotes and insights from the conversations along the way, and let you know when the report is ready. If you work in the startup ecosystem and want to get more involved in any way, I'd love to hear from you too.
I'm Adrian Whitehead and I work with startup and scaleup leaders on the leadership challenges that determine whether a company scales or stalls, after spending 18 years at Google leading high-performing client-facing technical teams through rapid growth.
I spend a lot of time with early stage founders who are trying to grow as leaders at the same time as they're building their business and there isn't much out there to support them in doing that. I also talk to a lot of exited founders who have amazing stories to tell and are keen to pay it forward and help the next set of founders, but don't always have the right vehicle to do it with their limited time.
