As Zalando scaled to 15,000 employees, co-CEO Robert Gentz's leadership evolved from hands-on execution to an "enabling" style. He now focuses only on areas where his founder's perspective is irreplaceable: setting culture, making ambiguous long-term bets, and providing conviction that only he can.

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.

Investors should view a founder's desire to learn skills like etiquette not as a weakness, but as a strong positive signal. It demonstrates humility, introspection, and a drive for self-improvement—key traits for a coachable and successful leader. The capacity for growth can be more valuable than pre-existing polish, identifying them as better long-term partners.

While grit is important, being pulled along by genuine curiosity is a more sustainable motivator than relying on willpower to push through rough patches. This innate drive to explore and learn prevents burnout and leads to discovering novel business opportunities without feeling like a constant struggle.

Beyond customer metrics, Snowflake’s corporate development lead looks for three key founder traits: hunger, hustle, and humility. Humility is especially critical as it indicates a founder who can appreciate other perspectives and engage in constructive debate, even while maintaining strong conviction in their own vision.

A founder must simultaneously project unwavering confidence to rally teams and investors, while privately remaining open to any evidence that they are completely wrong. This conflicting mindset is essential for navigating the uncertainty of building a startup.

The pace of change in AI means even senior leaders must adopt a learner's mindset. Humility is teachability, and teachability is survivability. Successful leaders are willing to learn from junior colleagues, take basic courses, and admit they don't know everything, which is crucial when there is no established blueprint.

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.