To get from early-stage startup to eventual initial public offering (IPO), founders need a strong belief that will carry them through all the investment rounds. A strong belief builds a big company – and that strong belief is based on founder story intertwined with the story of the business. The onus is on the founder to make it unique (stands out to investors), strong (one they will remember), and credible (one they believe). And part of the strong belief is that one day the company will be run by a CEO.

Leading like a CEO

The founder mindset is based on hustle and instinct, especially for first-timers. Organisational culture is based on the founder’s personality, and tends to be hands-on, reactive and personal.

Investors generally – unless they are your friends and family – are not investing for you to build a lifestyle business. They are there to make money too. To get through the successive rounds of investment that lead to becoming a unicorn or towards a potential IPO, founders need to demonstrate to potential investors that they have the maturity, drive, and vision to build a big company.

To lead like a CEO, founders need to build systems, strategy and processes that support a company for the long-term. Companies can’t survive on urgency and improvisation for long. Sustainable systems are the plumbing of a business – not particularly sexy, but vital to consistent growth.

Investors bet on leadership maturity. Founders will be judged on their ability to build leadership teams, think beyond tomorrow and their financial and operational discipline.

While CEOs think in quarters, founders should think in eras

Startup advisor and former CEO, Dave Kellogg, points out that while CEOs think in quarters, founders should think in years or even eras. He talks about speaking of your startup in terms of belief-driven eras: “I often say that strategy is best analysed in reflection. Meaning that somehow everything is clearer and simpler when you look back ten or twenty years to reflect upon what happened. In fact, I often encourage people to do a future look-back when formulating strategy: ‘imagine it’s ten years from now and your company won in the market – now tell me why.’”

To create a narrative that drives this kind of belief, founders need to communicate like a chief communications officer (CCO).

Communicating like a CCO

In early-stage startups, the founder narrative and the narrative of the business are closely intertwined. One of the emerging leaders I interviewed for ‘We Need New Leaders’ was Katja Kolmetz. As CEO and founder of Wavemakers, Katja’s mission to redefine leadership is now embodied in the Wavemakers programme for over 15,000 emerging leaders.

It grew out of her frustration in a tech company, where she was often the only woman and mostly the youngest person in the room. Since she had studied communications and not computer science, she always felt like an outlier. “I never felt empowered as a leader. I’ve always tried to fit into the expectations that my managers had for me, or how I saw other leaders. And even if I was successful and would get positive feedback, it didn’t make me happy.”

Katja now works to empower leaders who do not fit the current stereotype of leadership and to find leadership inside themselves. Her story is the story of the business.

This close matching of founder to story in the early stages of a business means founders are narrative driven. They are their own CCO and they need to learn to tell their story really well and become strong communicators in order to attract investors and raise the profile of their businesses.

Later-stage founders build reputation equity for themselves based on growing their authority. And authority is driven by being seen as a credible expert and thought leader in their space.

An example of this is Zoe Colosimo, COO and founding member of Neighbourly, a certified B Corp that helps businesses make a positive impact in their communities through volunteering, local fundraising, grants, and surplus product redistribution – all in one platform. With funding cuts in social services, a cost-of-living crisis, and environmental imperatives, the Neighbourly platform helps businesses give away resources to support the communities they serve – importantly, enabling supermarkets to redistribute surplus food by matching them to charities and food banks in their areas – and recently reached the milestone of donating 250 million meals.

Zoe’s authority and motivation stems from her belief that complex challenges must be addressed and not avoided just because they are difficult. As Neighbourly is consistently winning awards and garnering press headlines in the UK, Zoe is frequently invited as a public speaker. Authority combined with business success creates her strong reputation equity – and this rebounds positively to the business.

Conclusion

Doing great work is not enough – founders need to get comfortable talking about their work, whether it’s to investors, customers, partners, the media and employees. As well as leading like a CEO and communicating like a CCO, they become the chief reputation officers for their business. And they do this by being seen and heard as the visionary, era-defining leaders they are.