In financial terms, what does success look like for a founder?

Ultimately not failing is a success metric, but if we flip it, we can learn from failure.

This is an extremely broad term. Success for a ‘founder’ of a startup will look like an exit, and more often than not a 10x return on investment. Founder Success is all driven by actually getting an exit of some description, be that listing, trade sale or wrap up, but in real terms it’s actually being able to have some liquid cash for the many many years of hard work.

If the panel isn’t specific to startups (founder is generally looking at startups not general small businesses), then success needs to be defined by the aim. All too often people have a pre-conceived idea of what success looks like without actually having a starting point. What we normally try to teach clients is to ‘define success’. Is 25% profit what you want? And what if that was 20% because you paid a manager but you only worked 3 days per week? Does 25% in dollar terms allow you to get to the end outcome you are looking for?

For a bootstrapped startup, there are two kinds of success, lifestyle and those that want to scale.

For the lifestyle bootstrapped startup their financial success is dividends and salaries so they can lead the life they want.