What is emotional intelligence? It’s the ability to recognize, understand, and manage your own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. While we may aspire to understand and manage everything perfectly, in reality, the situation is different. The startup universe is a completely different arena where co-founders, senior executives, and the team form a challenging trinity.

Founders are in their own micro-loop and see things in the perspective of getting things done while the team players are working within the limitations and resources of the company. The challenge arises when founders are adamant about getting the result while the situation is completely against it.

The founder should get into a collaborative mode with team members rather than command. The first step is to understand the dynamics of the limitations versus the goal to be achieved. The common goal for any startup is to raise funds after achieving some stability and revenue generation. The billion-dollar question is what would be the valuation plus, based on revenue, how much multiples they can give for themselves. Numbers cannot lie or exaggerate on their own.

Founders should discuss with the fundraising team members and the lead in a way that the multiples are in a realistic zone and should be in line with industry standards and competitive benchmarks.

Founders sometimes come up with vague and absurd analogies and facts.

That user base for such products and services is so huge that we have significant potential for revenue and growth.

It is absolutely correct, but if they could acquire 1% of the user base, they can claim they are on the correct path. Furthermore, they should also determine the effort, timeline, and financial resources required to acquire the said user base.

Without determining it, creating the roadmap and strategies, how can they just assume that
“they can”. If this was so easy to do, they could have done it in a miniscule way by this time.

Rather than daydreaming or wishful thinking, bring the team together and motivate, empower them to reach their goals in an incremental way. Also, an outside perspective can provide a more realistic view of each milestone and its pathway.

Certain milestones could be achieved easily for a company as they have the resources and processes to get it done. However, achieving the same milestones might be challenging but not impossible if things are planned in an unconventional and unorthodox way.