At EQT Ventures, I meet all of the Founders we bring forward for investment. What I’ve learned is that founder success isn’t random: it follows measurable patterns.
By analysing over 5,000 psychometric profiles and the commercial results of the most successful founders of the past five years, we have distilled the six traits needed for founders to go all the way to exit.
Validated by the Oxford University Behavioural Psychology team and reinforced by AI-driven analysis from our proprietary platform Motherbrain, these traits consistently appear in high performing founders, with a 99% accuracy rate for certain traits.
I’m on a personal mission to eliminate bias in this process and bring data to founders that will help them scale themselves and their teams all the way to successful exit.
The result is six key traits that define founder success and eliminate bias in investment decisions. And, we’ve created a test you can use to benchmark yourself.
The most successful Founders have all six traits to a high degree. Among all test takers so far;
- 5% are above the 80th percentile across all six traits
- less than 1% are above the 90th percentile
- only 0.1% are outliers above the 97th percentile
In this series, week by week, I will share each of the six traits, the data behind it and why it’s important.
Week 1
Lightning Focus – the rarest top trait. And the most misunderstood in an eco-system where speed is so valued.
Only 0.35% of Founders have Lightning Focus as their strongest trait.
It’s the ability to process multiple inputs quickly and prioritise the most important actions with incomplete data.
Why is it so rare? Because it’s the trait with the smallest variance among the most successful founders – they cluster tightly around the same optimal pattern. The narrower that sweet spot, the fewer people fall into it.
Unlike resilience, focus is hard to measure psychometrically. The difference between average and world-class performance lies in subtle, low-variance signals and micro-behaviours like adaptive prioritisation and switching focus without losing direction.
That’s why it’s the hardest to assess, but the most predictive of long-term success.
But this is not just about speed; In fact confusing speed with Lightning cognition is a common mistake amongst Investors and Founders. It’s about urgency paired with an ability to focus on the right things. Most founders understand the importance of moving fast, but few manage to balance this clarity and consistency.
“You shouldn’t be paralyzed by lack of data. Move forward decisively, but stay analytical – progress requires both speed and focus without jumping to conclusions.” – Markus Halttunen, Advisor and Co-founder, Small Giant Games
When is it crucial in a company’s life journey?
This trait is obviously most critical in the early-stage phase, when speed can determine survival.
“When you’re building something, you need to maximize speed. People generally underestimate the cost of time. When you are on the back foot and competing with people who are in front of you, and have a lot more strength, the most important factor on which you can actually win is speed. […] It’s also the only way of keeping motivation high. Great people hate working in environments where they have to wait because of a lack of decision-making. […] As a leader, you need to adjust the speed and quality of your decisions for what’s best for the total group of people.” – Samir El-Sabini, CEO and Co-founder, Juni
But it has to evolve as the company scales. What works in the early startup phase – immediacy and constant execution – does not necessarily translate into operational excellence at scale.
Oscar Höglund, CEO and Co-founder of Epidemic Sound, explains that founders must reinvent themselves again and again as the company matures:
Startup. In the early startup phase, you need Lightning Focus, Progressive Explorer and Fearless Drive.
“When you’re a startup, your job as a founder is to be in all the details. You need to know everything better than everyone else. And if you’re not super focused, if you’re not solving the number one question, you’re basically screwed. You have no chance of survival.”
Scale-up. Then, as you scale, your role shifts more towards Magnetic Leadership. Instead of solving problems directly, the focus shifts to attracting talent and building a high-performance team.
“Your number one job is to attract the best and brightest talent. So suddenly your Lightning Focus isn’t that valuable. You’re going to get screwed if you focus too much on solving problems and being close to the customer. You’re only about Magnetic Leadership, creating that Fearless Drive, and helping the team carry the load to bring the vision to fruition.”
Growth and exit. The role transitions again – thinking more about external stakeholders, macroeconomic shifts, and long-term positioning. Fearless Drive and Progressive Explorer traits come to the fore.
“Suddenly you have to be more like a statesperson. You have to look at the horizon, you have to think five to 10 years out, you have to think macro, you have to think competition, regulation, shareholders – how do I run this company as a public CEO? There’s a completely different set of tools because everything then needs to be very measured.”
Why founders fail?
They move fast but lack clarity of focus. Activity does not always equal meaningful forward motion. It’s about moving fast with thought and intention.
“I’ve seen a lot of early-stage founders where their Lightning Focus becomes a bias. […] Early on, they make a couple of fast decisions without full information that work out well. But then they start to think that that is the way you always make decisions. And then they make a rapid string of decisions without full information, which they commit to fully because they got a lot of confidence early on. Then they run the company into the ground.” – Thomas Plantenga, CEO, Vinted
It requires balance. You need to be able to make decisions quickly with limited data – you will never have enough – but you also need to have the humility to course correct when those decisions send you down the wrong path.
“You’ve got to be honest and open with your employees. If you’re making a decision with incomplete data, you need to be clear that this is the best choice for now – but if new data shows otherwise, we need to adapt.” – Michelle Lu, CEO and Co-founder, Vsim
See if you have lightning cognition. Bring focus to your efforts.
If you’re building fast, you owe it to yourself to grow fast too.
