How to Build a Business is a Leadership Team in Leadership

When it comes to companies with visionary founders, Reed Hastings is one that springs to mind.

You probably already know his story: In 1997, Hastings was troubled by a $40 late payment on an Apollo 13 DVD he had borrowed from Blockbuster. Seeing an opportunity to disrupt the video rental space, he went on to partner with Netflix, which began as a mail order service that allowed subscribers to keep their DVD rentals for as long as they wanted. so.

If Hastings had been a different founder, he would have stood there, rode this one wave of his success and eventually disappeared, as many do. But he didn’t do that. Recognizing the growing power of the internet, Netflix moved from DVDs to streaming, dramatically changing the movie-watching experience as we knew it.

Hastings, who stepped down as CEO of Netflix in 2023, wasn’t just known for his powerful vision—he was equally known for his singular leadership style. Netflix hires—and keeps—only the best actors, and those who fit the bill have a lot of freedom, trust, and transparency.

Hastings’ methods have been described as quirky, autocracy, transformation, and many other things. But undeniably, his leadership style is unique. I don’t know Hastings personally, but it seems clear that he understood what worked for his company, and followed his system regardless of convention.

Successful CEOs don’t change overnight. But transformative founders can use many of the same skills they used to build their companies to eventually lead them. This is why building a business is really a leadership center.

You Can Apply What You’ve Learned

If you are a founder, having a growth mindset is important. You must be able to accept new information and use it to change course if necessary.

Hastings does this not only with his streaming reception, but also within his staff. In the early days of Netflix, the company laid off a third of its employees. Hastings decided that the best way to innovate was to keep only the “guardians” of the company – those he would fight to keep if they wanted to leave. If the leadership asserts that a person is not important, they would be shown the door.

The so-called guardian test is an unusual leadership style, but it’s also one that has served Netflix well. As you build a startup, you learn to trust yourself and work for you. That confidence and sense of self also translates into learning your feet as a CEO.

As Ali Rowghani, a partner at Y Combinator points out, it’s important to create your own style, not just copy what others have done in the past. Just like starting a company, just because something worked for one person doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.

“You have to be true to who you are. You can’t try to be someone else if you want to be a great leader. You can’t try to imitate Steve Jobs and hope that people will imagine you’re Steve Jobs,” he said.

You Know All The Wires

When I started my company, Jotform, I built every part myself. Not only did this give me a valuable opportunity to learn new skills, such as basic graphic design, it also gave me a good insight into what skills and abilities I wanted to bring to the team when we were finally expanding.

As a bootstrapped founder, this slow growth meant that I never had to make quick hiring decisions based on investor pressure. When you grow slowly and deliberately, it creates an atmosphere of stability that is often absent when VCs get involved. Because bootstrapped founders retain their independence, they can also maintain the consistency of their vision, and are not forced to hire faster and faster in response to changing ideas.

For founder-leaders, this is incredibly important: Studies have shown that a sense of stability and stability at work is one of the factors that most employees value more than salaries. In one survey of 13,488 people in 15 countries, 52% of respondents cited job security as the single most important factor in their work experience. Building from the ground up means you know what you want, and you can hire people with skills you intend to keep for a long time.

You Understand the Big Picture

One of the best things about transitioning from founder to CEO is that you understand the company’s priorities like no one else. And if you’re a bootstrapped founder, you have the freedom to ensure that the vision remains stable over time.

As a CEO, it is your job to identify the company’s big picture goals, and provide the necessary resources to make those goals come true. Founders must face the same way to deal with daily problems and maintain a high understanding of the company’s goals. Neither founders nor leaders have the luxury of avoiding difficult decisions, which is why the former is such good training for the latter.

In order to focus on the big picture, you must learn to delegate. This can be very difficult for the founder-leader, who tends to have complete control over every aspect of the company. As Reid Hoffman, co-founder and former chairman of LinkedIn, asks in a blog post: “Can you find, hire, and manage good people, then delegate work to them so that can you handle the challenges you are uniquely suited to work on?”

He continues: “Many designers are so talented that they find it difficult to leave work once they start doing it. They often think things like, ‘Is there anyone else who can do this as well as I can?’ Inevitably, the answer is, ‘No, especially at first, but maybe they’ll figure it out over time, like you did.'”

Building your own business is the perfect training ground to become a good leader. A growth mindset is a must, but you also have the opportunity to know your business and priorities better than anyone else. Great leaders aren’t made overnight, but if you’re already a successful founder, chances are you already have most of the tools you need.