Recently, the founder of a very well-funded startup got angry on a call because he heard a colleague drink water. His comment – “If what I’m saying is less important to you than drinking water, we shouldn’t even have this call”. Stop for a moment & let this behaviour sink in. Unreal.
Over the past few years, we’ve really glorified the ‘maverick’-ness of successful founders in India. It is widely believed that it takes a unique vision & an aggressive, win-at-all-cost mindset for a founder to achieve big wins. However, this gospel has percolated extremely bad culture at a number of unicorns/soonicorns. We’ve all heard stories of some leading founders who are known to instantly explode on their team, run a foul mouth, always blame others for failures & have zero empathy.