Managers are always keen on employing highly-skilled individuals. If they can’t get any, then they try to acquire under-skilled professionals who can learn as quickly as possible. All of this is directed towards increasing the productivity of a business. 

But most startup founders and managers often forget something important. What they forget is that they also need to develop certain skills if they are to play their roles as founders effectively. This leads us to talking about the top 9 skills which every startup founder needs to have. 

Top 9 Skills Every Startup Founder Needs

Communication Skills

Ever heard the saying “communication is key”? Indeed, good communication is the basis of every relationship including business partnerships. 

Startup founders who are aware of this secret take the time to build their communication skills. They try to speak slowly - since people often find it disrespectful to be spoken to in a hurry. They also ensure that they make use of polite words like sorry, pardon me, and thank you. Furthermore, they make sure to be detailed and clear in their communication. 

Team Building Skills 

Team building skills are necessary, especially at the start of a business. Typically, this skill helps founders to do four things:

1. search for talents, investors, co-founders, business executives, and even tools
2. contact the right or most relevant people 
3. connect with these relevant people
4. integrate them into the business. 

Team building skills come in handy all through a business’s lifetime. However, the bulk of it is required when a business is still budding. 

Management Skills

Startup founders are often tasked with making management decisions. They have good vision and since they also have the big idea on how to accomplish this vision, they become the go-to person for everything from acquiring resources to maintaining and deploying them. 

A founder’s management skill doesn’t just come in handy after the business has grown into something big. It kicks into gear from

the very beginning when the founder starts a team building process. The same thing also happens when they decide to gather non-human resources and tools needed for the business. Together, this skill ensures that customers, employees, and investors are all handled appropriately. It also involves managing machines, processes and tools. 

Accounting Skills 

Profits and losses determine if a business thrives or if it falls out of play. Since this is very important, big companies do their best to hire top-notch accountants. 

There’s no doubt that accountants do a good job at keeping accurate checks and balances. Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to have a founder who also knows a thing or two about accounting. In fact, if anything, these founders help verify records and even assist with some bookkeeping themselves. 

Founders who have accounting skills and who put them into practice from time to time are also very important to a company’s public image. They present their company as reliable and trustworthy. 

Sales Skills

A good sales team means growth for a business. And if a founder knows the ins and outs of sales - even better. The effect of having a founder lead his sales team or, at least, be a part of it is like having a general lead his army to a battle. It increases team spirit and helps to improve general coordination while also increasing the chances of a positive result. 

Technical Skills 

What would happen if technical workers who are in charge of a major operation in a company, for example running production machines - are totally unavailable at a time when there is work to be done? 

One possible outcome is that there might be no work done until these technical workers return. This could happen because many workers learn or specialise in only one technical skill, and such a situation would have a negative impact on productivity. 

Startup founders can avoid having their business caught in productivity traps like the one we just mentioned by encouraging employees to acquire multiple skills. Furthermore, they can take advanced steps by learning the technicalities of their business. This will put them in a position to supervise under-skilled workers in performing technical roles. Alternatively, they can take on these roles from time to time, especially if it is a new business with only a few employees. 

Analytical Skills

Analytical skills foster research, critical thinking, and the simplification of information. Founders who possess this skill are creative so they work with their original ideas. They also process information or ideas from people in a better manner, and can clearly present their own thoughts to an audience. This serves to enhance communication. Additionally, founders with analytical skills handle unexpected situations way better than those without it. 

Knowledge Building Skills 

Businesses evolve and, as a founder, you really wouldn’t want to get caught behind when this happens. So how do you keep up to pace? The first step would be to develop knowledge building skills. 

Knowledge building skills promote inquiry and learning. It helps one get a deeper understanding of a subject matter or even a skill. Ways in which a founder could develop this skill is by paying attention to feedback, seeking inputs from employees, engaging in conversations with fellow founders, and reading relevant books. 

Attention-to-detail Skills 

Founders must pay attention to details. It is a compulsory skill to adopt if there is any priority for getting things done exactly as planned. In a new startup, a founder’s attention-to-detail skills would help prevent production, service, press and publication, or advertisement errors that could scare away potential customers and investors. 

Similar to this, founders of older startups who are also attentive to detail would be able to protect their business’s corporate image by taking note of the same type of errors which we mentioned above. 

Conclusion

Imagine walking into a banking hall and seeing the startup’s founder at the counter, helping to serve customers or perhaps making an accounting decision. Also, imagine going to an automobile repair shop and seeing its founder right there, supervising a task or maybe even working on a car themselves. What you come to your mind when you see this? 

It would likely be that you can trust the company to perform reliably since its founder is an active part of its production or service process. Most founders want to get this kind of trust from their customers but they do not possess the skills that would help them do so.