Dalton Caldwell: evaluation

Transcript context

…This is going to be just a way broad question and I don't know if you'll have an answer, but just are there other just patterns you find across startups that do well? This is maybe the $64 million question of just founders and what they do that ends up leading to success. I don't think personality types matter as much. I've seen very quiet people, very extroverted people. You name it. I've seen all sorts of personality types. So for me personally, I don't think there's a personality type that people should copy and be like, "I need to be like this person. I need to be Steve Jobs. I need to be Elon." I don't really believe in that because there's just so much variation. Tony from DoorDash is so different than a lot of folks, and Rujul is so different and Grant from Whatnot. These are all very, very different people. Patrick is a different kind of person. Ryan from Flexport. These are just very different personality types. But the thing that I would argue folks that build really big companies have in common is they just really want it and they really believe in themselves and they really believe they can make it work. And that they're somehow deep in their internal psyche, there's something that's like, "I'm the one and I won't accept this not working." And even though objectively there's all this data coming in, this isn't working, this is bad. My employees want to quit, my executives want to quit. Whatever it is. Somewhere deep down in there, they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to make this work. This company is going to be big." And they just believe. And it's almost like that internal gravitational force inside of them is so large, it warps the world to bend to that will. And people start to believe it because they believe it so much and they convince their employees to believe in and they convince everyone around them that this is going to happen for them. And so again, this is not a personality trait. I'm arguing this is a core belief. So interesting. And it connects so much to what we've been talking about. Just don't die. Don't lose hope in what you're working on. A founder hearing this might feel like, "Man, I don't know if I'm so convinced this is going to work." In your experience, how much of this is internally, they're so certain and convinced versus externally, they need to show this confidence?…

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