After 17 years, Zalando's co-founder believes the key traits for founders are curiosity and humility. Curiosity enables learning from everyone and making good decisions, while humility ensures respect for challenges and prevents overconfidence from past successes.

A critical positive signal for investors is a founder who can honestly self-assess their skill gaps. This humility and willingness to hire people who are better than them in specific areas, even with differing personalities, demonstrates the maturity needed to scale a business.

Zalando's co-founder, Robert Gentz, believes curiosity and humility are the most critical leadership traits. Curiosity enables learning from everyone to make better decisions. Humility ensures a founder respects upcoming challenges and acknowledges that past success does not guarantee future victories, which is vital for long-term navigation.

Investor Byron Deeter looks for two seemingly contradictory traits: intense conviction and coachability. The signal of a great leader is that when pressure mounts, they don't retreat inward; they actively seek more input from their team and advisors before making a decisive call.

Beyond table stakes like hunger and vision, the most successful founders exhibit deep empathy ("people gene"), curiosity, and high emotional intelligence. They are secure, know their weaknesses, and often have a background in team sports, understanding that company building is a team effort.

Successful founders passionately defend their vision while simultaneously processing tough questions without defensiveness. This balance allows them to navigate the 'idea maze' effectively, learning and adapting as they go.

The founder's role is not specialist but a rotating generalist. They must identify the company's current bottleneck and become "70% good" at that function—be it product, finance, or sales. This allows them to lead the charge and know what to look for before hiring a true expert.

While thoughtful, listening founders typically outperform arrogant ones, some level of 'bullheadedness' is essential for survival. Entrepreneurship requires a blend of stubborn persistence to even start and the humility to listen and adapt along the way to scale successfully.

Many of the most successful entrepreneurs, both historically and today, exhibit minimal introspection. They focus their energy on building their ventures and moving forward rather than dwelling on the past or their internal state. This outward-facing mindset is a key, often overlooked, superpower.