Our Founders
FOUNDER ARCHETYPES
Part 1 // Why we Archetype
Preparing (not Pigeon-Holing) Founders
An archetype is a universal, symbolic pattern, character type, situation, or theme that recurs across cultures and time periods. It is a kind of blueprint that resonates deeply in human psychology and storytelling. Carl Jung defined archetypes as innate, universal prototypes for ideas and images that reside in the collective unconscious. These include recurring figures or roles that all humans intuitively recognize, like the hero, the wise old man, the mother, etc. In literature, the archetype is extended beyond the psychological to define characters, settings, and plot devices such as quests.
Having spent the past decade as repeat founders and working with hundreds more, we have come to intuitively recognize recurring patterns in an entrepreneur's mindset, approach, and even execution. The more frequently we encountered a particular blueprint, the more likely we were to give it a name. Internally, this became a useful heuristic for anticipating how a founder might need our help; we were better prepared to offer support that falls outside of growth capital activities like personal coaching, practicing communication, or time management. Eventually, we started communicating these labels to founders directly to help them see the pitfalls of an extreme, dogmatic, or unconsidered approach to running their venture. And with that, our catalogue of founder archetypes was born.
Our favourite founder archetypes are generally cautionary tales, they are not the prototypes of an entrepreneur that anyone strives to become. That said, they are not rooted in fundamentally flawed personality traits. The premise for this document was born by an increasing curiosity from our founders about how these archetypes emerge. We wanted to lay our thinking bare; it is not science, but it is experience. Neither the archetypes we present (that often sound like caricatures) nor the underlying personality traits that originate them are meant to be punitive or discount anyone. Our message is simply: your strengths, at an extreme, can become your weaknesses. The more focused your experience has been, the more likely you are to have some extreme tendencies. These can be your superpowers, but they can also be your downfall. In this way, our founder archetypes more closely resemble a literary archetype than a psychological one. They don’t necessarily define a cemented identity for any founder. Instead, like a quest, they suggest a highly possible path that a founder may wander down given their experience.
Part 2 // How we Archetype
The Founder Archetype Framework
Entrepreneurs, especially in the web3 space, exist in an everchanging environment. There are many dimensions that could influence their tendencies. Over the past decade, we have observed that there are four main drivers of entrepreneurial traits. An entrepreneur’s Education and Training, Work Experience, Leadership Experience, Success-to-Date, and Failure-to-Date are consistently, highly influential in determining their traits as a founder. Because archetypes rarely emerge from a middle ground, we look at each of these drivers in terms of their polarized extremes, by putting each on a spectrum.
If this is starting to sound like a complex assessment, it’s not. Anyone can assess anyone else by simply observing what tendencies they exhibit on each spectrum. It is not an exact science, people are generally in the middle. But once in a while, specific experiences push someone to the margins. Founders tend to fall into archetypes on the spectrum where they have the most extreme tendencies. Extreme tendencies on multiple spectrums don’t necessarily compound and create complex founder identities. Rather, a founder tends to track one archetype, which originates from the spectrum where they have the most extreme tendencies. And, they tend to do this (often temporarily) in particularly challenging moments of their entrepreneurial journey.
Below, each of the five spectrums is broken down and explained in terms of its extremes. Then, we identify the most commonly observed archetypes that stem from each.
1. Education & Training
// Relationship to product & users
The education spectrum polarizes specialist and generalist training. Here, discipline or level of study matter less than the depth and type of training. Generally, founders with highly technical or specialist degrees (usually computer science) exhibit tendencies on the left and founders with generalist degrees (usually business) exhibit tendencies on the right.
A founder’s education and training is most indicative of their approach to product and users. A founder’s educational paradigm shapes how they connect the dots between problem and solution. Education also supports an important bias; we tend to think that other people (our users) think the same way we do.
If a founder leans to either end of this spectrum they are likely to be one of two archetypes: The Big Brain is the pure-play engineer that puts product over everything else. They want to build, hire builders like them, and usually ignore business functions altogether. On the other hand, The Sensationalist is the hustler who has an unrelenting appetite to rally stakeholders. They tend to fall in love with any metric of success, even vanity metrics.
2. Work experience
// Relationship to the task-at-hand
Work experience can be polarized into theoretical vs. practical roles. Title, job description, and industry matter less than how a founder was asked to think and execute. Theoretical roles often encompass knowledge creation, whereas roles that require operational excellence and repeat processes are practical.
How a founder has been conditioned to work is a good indicator of how they will approach the current task-at-hand; how they will roll up their sleeves and get to work in times of crisis or triumph. The big difference here is how a founder views “problems” in their workload. Are they to be explored or eliminated?
If a founder leans to either end of this spectrum they often show up in one of two ways: Deep theoretical experience breeds problem-focused founders. The Web3 Astronomer loves to find a gap or problem that no one has seen before them. In the early stages they can often sell the problem to investors, but struggle to develop a coherent solution. Practical experience can lead to task managers who maintain a superficial grasp of the work ahead. The Executioner wants to eliminate problems and may fail to develop problem-solution fit.
3. Leadership Experience
// Relationship to resources
Leadership experience is polarized in terms of how a founder has had to control work and resources. These poles are often correlated with the maturity of a founder and their business. Young founders from young companies tend to idealize their hard skills when managing others. More senior leaders from established organizations see management and oversight as a hard skill in itself.
One’s leadership experience is indicative of how they will manage resources in their next step as a founder. For founders on the left side of the spectrum, time and maturity can ameliorate their need for control, it simply becomes impossible as they scale. For founders on the right side of the spectrum, it can be very hard to adapt to situations that demand efficient, hands-on work at multiple levels of the venture.
If a founder leans to the left side of the spectrum, they tend to celebrate their own ability to get things done. The Scrappy Scavenger had good sensibilities in their early stages, but their addiction to bootstrapping can block their team and venture from growing up. If a founder leans to the right side of the spectrum, they tend to wear leadership positions as a badge of honour. The Entitled Executive may believe that their pay grade puts them above work. They are very willing to acquire (and even overpay for) more resources to get this work done. Even with high awareness, it is very hard to dislodge this sense of entitlement.
4. Success-to-Date
// Relationship with macro forces
A founder's relationship to success is not polarized by having wild success or none at all. Rather, by the pace of success they have experienced. The founder who suddenly struck oil will have a different approach than the founder who has been diligently mining for gold. This experience tends to shape their relationship to macro forces. We like to think about it as if we were conducting a SWOT analysis:
The founder who landed on a good idea, whether by chance or skill, and was validated by investors and/or users relatively quickly, can become overconfident. The founders on the left of the spectrum may believe that their Strengths (S) easily override the Threats (T) identified in their SWOT analysis. For the founder who has made incremental gains, they tend to be dogmatic in their approach. Founders on the right of the spectrum, also believe highly in their Strengths (S) but not because they underestimate the Threats (T), because they tend to ignore the Opportunities (O) and carry on their course.
It is important to note that the speed of success is relative. The founder who has experienced quick success rarely knows it. It always feels like a long and hard fought battle. Archetypes that stem from traits on the left are particularly insidious because founders on the left have a hard time relating to these traits even when they are told.
There are many common archetypes that emerge if a founder leans too far to either end of the success spectrum. Those that have experienced fast success tend to underestimate or ignore market forces. These founders are often struggling to address problems associated with having too much money and scaling an organization before their product could. They might find themselves working hard to uphold a bloated and costly organization. The Burn Machine can easily become The Quick Fixer if they don’t find a balanced approach. When capital has dwindled but the product hasn’t scaled, a founder may become focused on bandaid solutions to avoid a down round.
The Grinder is an incredibly common archetype because gradual success is the more likely experience. Also, because their tendencies prevent them from reflecting on their business and moving into a more balanced approach, founders tend to stay in this mode. These founders often turn their ventures into sustainable lifestyles companies and grind for the rest of their days. A version of The Grinder is The Silent Killer, their focus essentially makes them invisible to the outside world.
5. Failure-to-Date
// Relationship to operating context
A founder's relationship to failure isn’t determined by whether or not they have experienced any. Rather, how they have embraced these inevitable moments. The key determinant here is: does a founder attribute failure to external circumstances, eschewing blame? Or, do they own failure and internalize it? Both tendencies can be beneficial if they are balanced. They tend to determine a founder's operating style.
The founder that prefers to place blame is often more steadfast in their mission, for better or worse. They may miss opportunities to improve, but are more likely to get lucky. In our experience, a founder that remains authentic to their vision is more likely to find themselves on an event horizon. The founder that takes blame is more likely to rethink their mission and iterate their approach. They often improve their skillset and become more effective, but their inconsistency or shapeshifting may also prevent them from landing on an event horizon.
Founders that are extreme in their failure attribution to external factors are less likely to adjust their course. They can become The Do-It-All founder that sees external parties as sources of failure and opt to bring and build everything in-house. Another possibility is that by writing off external factors as sources of blame, they are unable to consider the specificities of the market market. The Near-Miss founder often has a great product but fails to align with the market and misses their breakout moment.
Founders that are extreme in taking blame love to change themselves and their product as a people-pleasing (or in this case investor-pleasing) strategy, which usually leads to product scope-creep. The Feature Factory adds new features endlessly in an attempt to appease stakeholders, but usually never ships anything. When they begin to flounder, a founder that takes all the blame but has run out of ways to extend their scope may fixate on an end goal. In web3, this is typically the TGE. The Exit-or-Bust founder may throw all their weight into a launch or listing to recover from what they perceive to be a string of personal failures.
Part 3 // Which Archetype We Look For
The Rinse-and-Repeat Founder
At WTG, we back second or third time founders that have evidenced their revenue-making capabilities, which can come from having a founding or leadership role in a web2 startup. These founders balance deep domain expertise with commercial acumen; they embrace and often champion novel go-to-market approaches for their well articulated target market. Their users exist within significant demographics that have real-world needs. In other words: their users’ needs (and their solution) extend outside of crypto.
Their businesses are radical rethinks, not incremental improvements, bringing a net positive contribution to any region, vertical, ecosystem they work within. The role of blockchain is pivotal to their offering, they never engage in technology theatre. A token is often involved, but there is a focus on value accrual before it is launched (or even fully designed), and it always supports the fundamentals of the business.
The natural question for most founders is: “which archetypes do you try to avoid?” The answer is both: “none” and “all of them”. We say “none” because using archetypes as a heuristic has helped us to hone our founder focus, but we don’t use them to write off anyone who lives at the edge of any spectrum, or even avoid founders who are currently tracking the journey of a familiar archetype.
But, we also say “all of them” because our archetypes have led us to prioritize “rinse-and-repeat” experience. We use this term to describe founders who have seen a lot, done a lot, and tried to succeed in a lot of different ways. We have found that the best way to ameliorate extreme tendencies is through an accumulation of diverse experiences, or, better yet, by assembling a founding team of three to four members who have each accumulated diverse experiences.
The “rinse and repeat” founder has experienced success and failure, they’ve gathered the flotsam and shaken off the jetsam from each experience, and then they did it all again, over and over, in multiple contexts. Because of this, they can securely walk the centre line of each spectrum, drawing from extreme tendencies on either side when they can be of service to their venture. They rarely run the risk of a side quest that tracks a familiar archetype.
It is hard to actively cultivate “rinse and repeat” characteristics. For most founders (and their investors) the best case scenario is as straight and short a path to success as possible. This linear founder journey certainly exists and we applaud anyone who has been able to follow one. As founders ourselves, we have all followed circuitous paths. These tend to be more painful initially, but pay greater dividends the further you follow them. So, when we make a founder bet, it tends to be on a founder who has rinsed, repeated, and is ready to make waves.