Did you ever wonder why some entrepreneurs always seem to have all the luck and success, while others never seem to catch a break? As an angel investor, I quickly learned that luck has very little to do with it, and I now look for some personal characteristics and leadership styles that separate the potential winners from the losers.
These differences are the reason that investors say that they invest in people, rather than ideas. As I was reminded again by the classic book from Dennis Perkins, “Leading at the Edge,” this isn’t a new concept. He illustrates this by comparing the acts of numerous teams which faced the edge of life and death as early Antarctic explorers in the 1800s.
He was able to identify ten lessons from the common threads to survival in the winning explorer teams, which I believe apply equally well to the survival and success of business startup teams today:
