It’s by no means been a greater time to be a founder within the UK, and the curiosity is rising. Enterprise Nation’s 2026 StartUp Ambition analysis discovered 41% of UK adults have been desirous about beginning a enterprise, with 62% of individuals aged 25 to 30 planning to begin a enterprise this 12 months.
Most of those companies won’t succeed, and much fewer will ever attain the stage of in search of enterprise capital (VC) funding. However this 12 months’s information exhibits a shift the place extra respondents cited financial causes, reasonably than ‘ardour’, behind their ambitions as individuals reply to financial uncertainty by taking issues into their very own arms. We name it ‘dissatisfaction’, and it’s one of many key character traits we search for within the founders we select to work with.
1. Relentless curiosity
Albert Einstein is credited as saying: “The vital factor is to not cease questioning.” He was providing recommendation on life, however may simply as simply have been speaking about entrepreneurship. The founders who change issues are sometimes those who couldn’t cease asking ‘why?’. They’re stressed, dissatisfied, pushed to interrogate the whole lot round them.
That doesn’t imply being troublesome on a private stage. Lots of the finest founders we meet are charming. However beneath the floor is a relentless first-principles pondering that refuses to just accept the world at face worth. It’s that fixed questioning that creates the business alternative. So, one of many first issues we search for in founders is a level of intolerance. It’s a particular private attribute, and when it’s mixed with real area experience, it turns into one of the dependable indicators we’ve discovered.
2. The sq. pegs
Second, founders usually don’t fairly slot in inside extra conventional organisations. For a lot of their lives, they’re pushed to adapt, within the classroom, at college, and all through their careers. Whereas this strain works for some, for the “sq. pegs” that is usually unconventionality their best power.
The beginning-up world is, by its nature, unstructured, and the individuals who thrive in it are sometimes those that create order from that dysfunction. They see what others miss, and construct what others wouldn’t try. Ask for a personality reference and also you would possibly hear: “Very smart, however troublesome.” In a company context, that’s a damaging, however within the start-up world, it’s extra more likely to be a suggestion.
3. Overeaching ambition
Nik Storonsky (Revolut’s founder) as soon as stated that what motivated him within the early days was for Revolut to be “greater than JP Morgan”. These sorts of bold statements all the time sound fanciful and unattainable… till they aren’t. Now, Revolut has secured a British banking licence and appears able to tackle these legacy establishments. A lot of the finest founders we search for have that oversized motivation to carry out.
The simplest founders are, by nature, pushed. When your livelihood depends upon the success of your online business, you don’t swap off. No VC investor, nonetheless dedicated, can replicate that stage of involvement. Even probably the most devoted VC operates throughout a portfolio, which creates an inherent diploma of separation. That’s merely the truth.
Which is why probably the most worthwhile factor VC traders can supply an ideal founder will not be steering on how one can run the enterprise, however good old school capital. This offers founders room to check assumptions, adapt when wanted and maintain constructing. Past that, the most effective VC assist is business: opening doorways, making introductions and accelerating revenue-driving relationships.
4. A single-minded method to success
Sturdy founders are intensely targeted on execution, which is a advantage, however it might probably additionally slender perspective. What a very good VC investor can supply is one thing like a baseline reset serving to founders’ step again from the day-to-day and encourage them to take a helicopter view. It’s an opportunity to have a clear-headed dialog about the place the enterprise is heading, and whether or not the longer-term aims nonetheless make business sense.
The place our involvement as traders turns into extra substantive is on the level of exit. The mechanics of promoting a enterprise are areas the place we will add real worth, exactly as a result of we see these buildings often. However even then, the founder stays within the driving seat. After a decade of constructing one thing from nothing, nobody is extra motivated, extra knowledgeable, or extra targeted on getting the end result proper.
Do you’ve what it takes to construct a VC-backed enterprise?
If you wish to develop into an early-stage founder, there’s actually no cause to not go for it. The infrastructure and instruments are more and more there, and the result’s a genuinely wealthy ecosystem of companies being constructed throughout the nation, a lot of which can by no means search, or want, enterprise capital.
However if you happen to take VC cash, you’ll virtually definitely work more durable than you ever have earlier than. Not you’re pressured too, however since you wish to. There isn’t a coasting, and there’s no nine-to-five. The end result, for higher or worse, turns into a part of who you’re.
Understanding that, and selecting to do it anyway, is itself a sign that you simply is likely to be precisely the form of one that must be working their very own start-up.
Seb Wallace is head of Triple Level Ventures.
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