Great Entrepreneurs Are Like Guided Missiles

Note: A version of this post appeared in Fortune magazine’s Entrepreneur Insider network under the headline “The Difference Between a Great Entrepreneur and a Really Bad One”

Great entrepreneurs are like guided missiles. If you point them in the right direction, nothing is going to stop them from hitting the target.

It starts with passion. At Dreamit, we will always back a missionary over a mercenary. Founders who are in it for the economic opportunity will always quit when the going gets tough. An entrepreneur who is driven by the need — not the desire — to change the way the world currently works will stick with it through thick and thin.

Then it takes empathy — not sympathy. The difference between the two is the difference between feeling bad for someone vs. knowing exactly how that person feels. With empathy, a good founder can look at a feature and intuitively know that it solves a user’s problem. An empathic entrepreneur not only knows that something is a problem in his industry, but he can get so far inside the mind of the specific decision-maker that he knows the buyer will look at the service and think, “This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for.”

A great entrepreneur is neither a weathervane nor an anchor. He has well-reasoned but lightly held opinions. There is so much bull**** out there, with so many people pretending to be mentors who have absolutely no business being one. A good entrepreneur almost never adopts advice without reflection. If somebody gives him feedback that is contrary to his current hypotheses, he digs into the reasoning behind that feedback and, if and only if the logic and evidence are good, he changes his hypotheses.

The best entrepreneurs are quick learners and even quicker doers. You often hear them saying things like, “So I taught myself X,” or, “I’ll figure that out.” They love to learn, but they also know when it’s time to tear themselves away from the books and start doing. You never have to tell them to do anything twice, and sometimes not even once. For instance, a potential customer was talking to one startup in the Dreamit program and suggested that the team look into becoming an approved vendor. When they were done, I mentioned to another startup in the room that they might also want to look into it, whereupon that founder turned to me and said, “I’m already halfway through the application.”

Lastly, the best entrepreneurs have failed before. If you find someone who has never failed, odds are they never really pushed their limits.

Bottom line: When you know what to look for, the best entrepreneurs aren’t hard to find.