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The super{set} Entrepreneurial Guild

July 5, 2022
Written By
July 5, 2022
What We Look For in a Co-founder
Written By

Has someone looking to make a key hire ever told you that they are after “coachability”? Take a look at the Google ngram for “coachability” — off like a rocket ship since the Dot Com bubble, and it’s not even a real word! Coaching is everywhere in Silicon Valley...

What We Look For in a Co-founder

Has someone looking to make a key hire ever told you that they are after “coachability”?

Source: Google Ngram

Take a look at the Google ngram for “coachability” — off like a rocket ship since the Dot Com bubble, and it’s not even a real word!

Coaching is everywhere in Silicon Valley. We don’t just mean on the hardwood of the Chase Center — whether you’re a techie, a yuppie, a new-age hippie, in SF there’s a coach for you.

Are you an engineer just realizing that sitting for 12 hours a day isn’t conducive to a beach body? Get a fitness coach. Are you a troubled couple trying to make your relationship last? Get a relationship coach. Are you looking to soothe your soul? Surely there is a spiritual coach along the Haight that will sell you a salt crystal or a wellness coach down in Big Sur that will sell you a juice-only crash diet and yoga retreat.

For startup founders who will do anything to make sure their company succeeds, want an extra edge, or maybe are pressured by their Board, all manner of executive coaches and venture capitalists are out there doling out aloof hands-off advice. As we’ve discussed before, that’s not us.

At super{set}, we don’t critique, we found and build — our model is fundamentally about doing. We’ve used coaches, and recommended them to our founders, but don’t get it twisted — we aren’t coaches. We don’t look for “coachability”: we look for dirt under the fingernails.

At super{set}, we lock arms with our co-founders to actually make it so. We show up every day and make each other’s brains hurt. Through our work together, we pass down years of expertise earned as serial founders and successful entrepreneurs. During this process, though, we too want to learn from our incredibly talented and intelligent co-founders. Together, we’re mutual craftsmen with a refined sense of the art of company building, creating something from scratch. super{set} is a guild dedicated to the craft of company building.

In the European medieval era, as the mercantile class burgeoned and the industrial revolution was centuries away, skilled craftsmen joined together in guilds dedicated to protecting and advancing their art. Blacksmithing, stonemasonry, glass blowing, underwater basket weaving — you name it, there was a guild for it. Guilds received and trained talented inductees as apprentices and graduated world-class craftsmen. Their method was not abstract coaching, but hands-on, side-by-side crafting.

This has been our experience as serial founders: you start as a puppy, someone takes you under their wing, you learn through trial and error, and eventually, by dint of hard work, you become a master. We’ve seen that there is something fundamentally learnable about the art of company building, given the proper temperament. The word “coaching,” with its connotation of detached counseling, is woefully inadequate to describe what we do in practice.

At super{set} then, we aren’t on the lookout for “coachability,”, we’re on the lookout for a core disposition that will eventually make a world-class company builder. Here are the four things we look for in our co-founders and why:

Grit

Company-building from scratch is not for the meek of spirit. We look for co-founders who can show up and take a (figurative) punch. Founders need to be able to bend, flex, and revise. Founders will be told “no” dozens of times by the customers they are trying to get onboard: founders have to be steadfast and fierce in response. Grit shows us that our co-founders have staying power.

Humility

Startups are built on strong convictions, loosely held. We look for co-founders that recognize they don’t have all the answers and are shameless in asking for help. Founders need to be flexible enough that they can acknowledge mistakes and course-correct. Humility shows us that our co-founders recognize that they don’t know everything and are thus looking to learn.

Organized Thinking

We look for co-founders that can put things in their places, and categorize and name them. You must be able to say “my flux capacitor is called Fu and it gets these inputs and outputs” — to describe how things work in a way that is accessible is essential. Organized Thinking shows us that our co-founders can take complicated concepts and connect the dots to distill them into simple terms in order to architect a solution.

Clock Speed

Startups move fast and the product build-out is often about combining new information in novel ways. We collaborate with co-founders who can quickly process new information being thrown at them. Founders have to be able to keep up with us, but it is a two-way street: when you are first to the goal, you have to bring us along with you. Clock speed shows us that our co-founders can both keep up with us and bring us along for the journey.

Interviewing Co-founders

How do we tease out these qualities and build conviction in a co-founder candidate? Every guild has its entry stakes. Here’s the approach you can expect if you interview with us:

  • We dig into prior experience or achievement: previous startup experience can indicate grit
  • We interview widely across the team: how a candidate behaves with our least experienced super{set} team member versus Tom and Vivek can tell us much about humility
  • We employ experiential interview tactics: the most important part of our interview process is the “jam session” where we actively assess a candidate’s organized thinking and clock speed

Think you have what it takes to join our guild dedicated to the art of company building? Take a look at our open positions here, or reach out directly.

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read more

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read more

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read more

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This post was written by Ketch Sales Director, Sheridan Rice, as part of our #PassTheMic series.

read more

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read more

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read more

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read more

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read more

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Has someone looking to make a key hire ever told you that they are after “coachability”? Take a look at the Google ngram for “coachability” — off like a rocket ship since the Dot Com bubble, and it’s not even a real word! Coaching is everywhere in Silicon Valley...

read more

Former Salesforce SVP of Marketing Strategy and Innovation Jon Suarez-Davis “JSD” Appointed Chief Commercial Officer at super{set}

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read more

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read more

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This post was written by Ketch Data Privacy & Compliance Specialist, Jocelyn Brunson, as part of our #PassTheMic series.

read more

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This month we pass the mic to Sagar Gaur, Software Engineer at super{set} MLOps company MarkovML, who shares with us his tips for working within a global startup with teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, India

read more

We don’t critique, we found and build.

The super{set} studio model for early-stage venture It is still early days for the startup studio model. We know this because at super{set} we still get questions from experienced operators and investors. One investor that we’ve known for years recently asked us: “you have a fund — aren’t you just a venture capital firm with a different label?”

read more

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This post was written by Habu software engineer, Martín Vargas-Vega, as part of our new #PassTheMic series.

read more

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When a VC decides to invest in a company, they write up a document called the “Investment Memo” to convince their partners that the decision is sound. This document is a thorough analysis of the startup...

read more

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Considered by some to be “America’s Second Independence Day,” Juneteenth has only recently entered the national zeitgeist. Celebrated on the third Saturday in June, it became a federal holiday just last year under President Joe Biden. Many companies are left wondering how to acknowledge the holiday. We sat down with Eskalera’s co-founder Dr. Tolonda Tolbert to get her take.

read more

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This post was written by Ketch Developer Advocate, Ryan Overton, as part of our #PassTheMic series.

read more

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In our last post, we discussed how data is the new general-purpose technology and that is why at super{set} we form data-driven companies from scratch. But new technologies are a promise, not a sudden phase change.

read more

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o11y - What is it? Why is it important? What are the tools you need? More importantly - how can you adopt an observability mindset? Habu Software Architect Siddharth Sharma reports from his session at super{summit} 2022.

read more

Why I Left Google To Co-found with super{set}

Gal Vered of Checksum explains his rationale for leaving Google to co-found a super{set} company.

read more

Data Eats the World

The wheel. Electricity. The automobile. These are technologies that had a disproportionate impact on the merits of their first practical use-case; but beyond that, because they enabled so much in terms of subsequent innovation, economic historians call them “general-purpose technologies” or GPTs...

read more

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The era of easy money - or at least, easy returns for VCs - is over. Tom Chavez is calling for VCs to show up in-person at August board meetings, get off the sidelines, and start adding real value and hands-on support for founders.

read more

Too Dumb to Quit

The decision to start a company – or to join an early stage one – is an act of the gut. On good days, I see it as a quasi-spiritual commitment. On bad days, I see it as sheer irrationality. Whichever it is, you’ll be happier if you acknowledge and calmly accept the lunacy of it all...

read more

Why Head of Product is Our First Co-Founder

At super{set}, we stand side-by-side and pick up the shovel with our co-founders. Our first outside co-founder at a super{set} company is usually a Head of Product. Let’s unpack each portion of that title....

read more

Lessons of Grit from my Immigrant Parents

This post was written by Ketch Solutions Engineer, Sahiti Surapaneni, as part of our #PassTheMic series.

read more

How I Learned to Stop Optimizing and Love the Startup Ride

Reflections after a summer as an engineering intern at super{set}

read more

Diamonds in the Rough

Obsessive intensity. Pack animal nature. Homegrown hero vibes. Unyielding grit. A chip on the shoulder. That's who we look for to join exceptional teams.

read more