Vital Skills that Startup CEOs Need, Which Multinational CEOs Overlook

Whilst the job title may be the same, startup CEOs face very different challenges to CEOs of multinational businesses, pushing them to make use of skills that many other positions may overlook.

The skillset needed for a successful CEO is both broad and diverse. Yet, in my experience of taking PushFar from a vision to a leading global platform, there were certain skills that I utilised, that if I had jumped into CEO of a fully-fledged and thriving company, I may not have understood the importance of.

Resilience

It goes without saying, starting a business can often feel as though there are more knock backs than steps forward, with ‘20% of startups failing within the first year, and nearly 90% not making it past the five-year mark.’ Resilience is a primary skill needed for success. Each time you get back up, the chances of success are more likely: ‘Serial entrepreneurs who have failed before, still have a 20% chance of success in their next startup.’

When starting out with PushFar, I learnt that one of the biggest strengths that startups and small businesses had, over larger competitors, was agility to pivot, evolve and scale features, functionality and even the product as a whole. This is vital for entrepreneurs’ looking to succeed and when competitors crop up, the resilience required to keep going, can be further supported by the knowledge that you will, in almost every case, be able to move faster and more efficiently than a large company.

Vision Focus

One of the most vital skills for startup CEOs is creating and focusing on a vision. As simple as this sounds, when creating a company, implementing a brands identity is crucial, especially when building the primary foundations. For multinational CEOS, the company already has structure and a solid identity, so following a vison is often clearer. However, channelling the founding concepts at the heart of all decisions is still of great importance for keeping consistency to a brands messaging.