Lab Notes: The Beginning

A running research log on the psychology of startup success — starting with 12 traits and no predetermined answers.

I’m trying something a bit different. Alongside the usual Founders’ Psyche posts and founder features, I want to start sharing a running log of the research I’m doing into founder psychology.

It’s going to be raw. Just things I’m learning as I go, without jumping to conclusions before I’ve actually earned them. I’m calling it Lab Notes.

To give you some context, I’m building a platform to help founders understand themselves better. We’re talking about psychological tools rather than just business tools. The foundation of the whole project is a question I haven’t fully answered yet: which psychological traits actually predict whether a startup succeeds?

I recently spent six days buried in research papers just trying to find a starting point. I came out of that rabbit hole with twelve traits that have enough peer reviewed backing to be worth a proper look:

• The Big Five Personality Traits

• Locus of Control

• Grit

• Entrepreneurial Self Efficacy

• Need for Achievement

• Tolerance for Ambiguity

• Cognitive Flexibility

• Risk Propensity

• Passion (Harmonious versus Obsessive)

• Resilience

• The Dark Triad

• Growth Mindset

Some of these will make it into the final framework and some definitely won’t. I genuinely don’t know which ones yet.

Every couple of weeks, I’ll share what I’m uncovering about each of these. I’m going to start next time with the most controversial trait on the list.

Ashish