As a Driver...


You can’t help yourself—entrepreneurship is almost hard-wired into your identity. You’re motivated to discover unmet customer needs through a market-sensing intuition. You are supremely confident and unrelenting in your pursuit of commercial success, and you expect your colleagues to be equally focused on impact. There is minimal room for error. Creating a successful business or social venture of your own is an important aspect of your self-validation.

Motivation

You've always seen yourself as an entrepreneur. You're ignited by ideas, and driven to commercialize them with a fervor that feeds your self-confidence.

Decision Making

You're initially intuition based—but you then seek data and other external points of reference to triangulate and refine your decisions.

Management Approach

Hands-on, directive, exacting—with low or no tolerance for failure.

Leadership Style

You're results and outcomes focused, tending to attract and inspire like-minded perfectionists. You have a harder time with followers who are not equally driven and goal oriented.

Your Builder Snapshot:


Gifts (Strengths):

  • A combination of intuition and fact-based analysis to anticipate market trends before competitors.
  • Tenacity, ambition, and clear focus minimize distractions.


Gaps (Weaknesses):

  • Over-identification with product can lead to missing new market shifts.
  • Impatience with customers who don’t get the appeal of your product.
  • A struggle to empower an expanded team as your company scales.


Strategies for Growth:

  • Shift from product creator to market scout.
  • Don’t expect everyone on your core team to share your passion and intensity.
  • Don’t let your “product narcissism” lead to innovation complacency.
  • Admit you may not be the best salesperson for every prospective customer.
  • What your hubris-to-valuation gap with financial sponsors.

From the Authors...

There are four distinct types of highly successful entrepreneurs: The Driver, The Explorer, The Crusader, and The Captain. Each builds differently. You are most like The Driver – with numerous implications for how you’ll best succeed in business.

We discovered these four Builder Types using a patented analytical methodology, supported by extensive quantitative research and hundreds of founder interviews. In chapter 2, you’ll find insights and stories from successful Drivers like you—demonstrating how they’ve navigated the five dynamic challenges as Drivers to build businesses of enduring value.

Thank you for taking a look. We hope you will find this framework and the supporting materials to be a helpful tool to employ in your own business ventures.

If you wish to learn more about the implications of The Driver and how you can best partner with your co-builder, employees, customers and investors, you can purchase your copy of Built for Growth today: Order Book


Chris Kuenne

Founder, Rosetta and Rosemark Capital; Faculty at Princeton University

John Danner

Faculty at UC Berkeley and Princeton University
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