  Startup companies solve many of today's most complex and challenging
scientific, technical and social problems, such as the decarbonisation of the
economy, air pollution, and the development of novel life-saving vaccines.
Startups are a vital source of social, scientific and economic innovation, yet
the most innovative are also the least likely to survive. The probability of
success of startups has been shown to relate to several firm-level factors such
as industry, location and the economy of the day. Still, attention has
increasingly considered internal factors relating to the firm's founding team,
including their previous experiences and failures, their centrality in a global
network of other founders and investors as well as the team's size. The effects
of founders' personalities on the success of new ventures are mainly unknown.
Here we show that founder personality traits are a significant feature of a
firm's ultimate success. We draw upon detailed data about the success of a
large-scale global sample of startups. We found that the Big 5 personality
traits of startup founders across 30 dimensions significantly differed from
that of the population at large. Key personality facets that distinguish
successful entrepreneurs include a preference for variety, novelty and starting
new things (openness to adventure), like being the centre of attention (lower
levels of modesty) and being exuberant (higher activity levels). However, we do
not find one "Founder-type" personality; instead, six different personality
types appear, with startups founded by a "Hipster, Hacker and Hustler" being
twice as likely to succeed. Our results also demonstrate the benefits of
larger, personality-diverse teams in startups, which has the potential to be
extended through further research into other team settings within business,
government and research.
