What all Great Entrepreneurs have in Common

Updated on 15 August 2018

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work-startup-meetingThree things separate good entrepreneurs from really great ones, says Dominique Collett – vision, direction and focus.

“I look at people like Adrian Gore from Discovery and Willem Roos from  OUTsurance and some of the new CEOs of the startups that we’ve invested in like Schalk Nolte from Entersekt and Cameron Stevens from Prodigy Finance. The first thing is that they have vision. A leader [is someone who] thinks big and they’ve got a very grand idea of what it is they want to do. The second thing is that they’ve got a very good idea of how they are going to get there. The third thing is that they’ve got focus. All of the great entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with are very focused,” says Collett.

Collett is the senior investment executive at Rand Merchant Investments and the head of AlphaCode, a hub for fintech businesses disrupting the financial services, including companies such as mobile money transfer startup, ZoonaMerchant Capital, an alternative lender for small businesses, as well as payment services providers, Yoco and iKhokha. They help support, grow and fund disruptive and scalable business models.

Collett shares 4 traits that great entrepreneurs possess. 

1. They don’t just talk, they deliver

For us it’s all about follow-through. Can you indeed follow through on what you’ve set out to do? For us, what we’ve seen in businesses like Discovery and OUTsurance is that they say what they’re going to do and they do it. That’s what it boils down to. They set a vision and they deliver against that vision. They’ve got an exceptional focus on execution and on delivery.

Great businesses don’t just come up with great ideas. It’s not just about being constantly innovative and exciting and all the rest, it’s all about can you deliver on the little things and the big things? That’s the one common trait that’s shared by all successful businesses.

“It’s all about can you deliver on the little things and the big things?”

2. They have an A-Team 

The second common trait is [being] able to build a team that stays with you for the long haul. The really successful businesses have longevity in the team. You find that the team has been together for a number of years.

They’ve got employees who are committed, who are passionate and everyone knows what they are doing in that organisation. So you don’t have high staff turnover, everyone has their job description and they know exactly what they are doing.

Another thing that we see with businesses that scale successfully, they are those that are led by leaders who are always able to think about things at a high level and are able to think about the details as well

3. They see the big picture

To build a strong business, as a leader, you have to work on the business instead of in the business. That’s a bit of a cliché, but you find that entrepreneurs would often be bogged down with the details and they struggle with the important things.

And that’s another thing that we see with businesses that scale successfully, they are those that are led by leaders who are always able to think about things at a high level and are able to think about the details as well.

4. They have a support system

All of these really great entrepreneurs had very strong social support systems around them. So they generally come from very supportive families or from very supportive societal structures.

This article was originally published in August 2017.

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