Revealing The Awesome Qualities of Unicorn Teams

OpenAI, SpaceX, Canva, Stripe, and many other high-growth companies share one thing in common.

That is a highly effective founding team.

Regardless of industry or product, a high-performing team is critical to success. The qualities of this team include:

1. A background of elite wins

2. A strong network of influencers and investors

3. A purpose beyond money

4. The ability to grind for delayed gratification

5. Basing every decision on data

6. Making excellence a requirement

7. Coming together to win

Elite wins

Founders from Ivy League schools, professional sports, previous exits, and competitive roles within big tech have proven their ability to achieve more than their peers. While their past achievements are not significant, they prove these founders can work for something over a long period.

Network

Founders with a strong network of influencers and investors have a much easier time raising funds and getting press for their companies. For example, OpenAI reached rapid growth with ChatGPT due to Sam Altman's network and raised record amounts of funding for it. Had someone without a network built ChatGPT, it may never have been known.

Purpose

Money is not a strong enough purpose for the team to achieve greatness. This goes back to the ability to reach a long-term goal. For example, teenagers do not achieve at a level to attend an Ivy League school due to future earnings alone. They do it for a greater purpose, such as improving their family's reputation, proving something to the world, or because they have to win.

Delayed gratification

Long-term goals will never be achieved without the ability to work hard without seeing immediate results. Sports legends all have stories of relentless practice sessions, workouts, and sacrifices beyond their peer group. Great founders do the same with learning, experiments, and networking while their peers have fun.

Data

One thing I learned from Google and Amazon leadership is that every decision is based on data. For startups, this includes testing ideas before execution. For example, cold-calling a potential market for pre-sales is an excellent way to test product market fit.

Excellence

Growing up in East Tennessee, my dad worked at the National Laboratory in Oak Ridge. One of the sayings he and his colleagues like to say is, "That is close enough for government work." Unicorn founders cannot live with "close enough." Their personality requires excellence.

Coming together

Our first investor pitch as a new AI company was a disaster. While the team included Ivy League graduates and a founder with a previous exit, we did not work well together. The most difficult part is having a group of hard-driving, perfection-seeking, win-at-all-cost founders come together as a team. Rarely does it happen.

Conclusion

The attributes of a unicorn team are hard enough to find in the two to four founders. However, this team must be able to recruit others with similar qualities to ensure rapid growth as it scales into hundreds or even thousands of employees. This is what makes unicorns, well, unicorns.