Your best skill is that you are coachable, are a sponge, and are keen to learn.

It can be hard to run a start-up – whenever you are evaluating an investment opportunity, one of the key questions – Is the founder coachable? If not, then she/he is not following your advices.

You have to master many different skills, many of which you may be completely clueless right now. You may have to learn on the job, to make sure that the start-up doesn’t crash and burn. It’s different from running business operations.

This is no mean achievement – it requires a lot of flexibility, agility, resilience, intellectual fire power, grit and emotional maturity. Key for your success is whether or not you are capable of learning.

You may be better off with your ignorance; and are willing to do the work in order to fill the gaps in knowledge, rather than being overconfident if arrogant about intellectual prowess.

This can haunt you later on, for not capable of unlearning and relearning.

You may not listen to feedback, and unable to pivot based on changing circumstances, may be due to refusing to acknowledge reality .

You think you already have all the solutions, and therefore, not open to receiving feedback or accepting advice.

You should be honest about your limitations, and willing to put in the hard work needed to find out the answers to what you  may not know remaining confidently ignorant.

This is a remarkably uncommon trait , because it requires a lot of self-awareness to be able to learn from different people . Not everyone has the maturity to accept feedback from others – especially when you have the title of CEO, and think that your job description signifies that you know all the solutions. Being the CEO can go to your head if you act immature!

Yes, the buck does stop with you, but you do need to be humble and curious, so that you can roll with the punches.

This is why mature founders like you, who’ve graduated from the school of hard knocks, and have been able to show that you have grown over the years becoming able to absorb wisdom from others, are far more likely to do well as entrepreneurs.

You may still have not learned how to judge this character trait accurately, but get a fairly good sense by seeing how well the founder answers queries and objections.

Suresh Shah, Pathfinders Enterprise

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