What Soft and Hard Skills should be developed to become a successful startup founder: experts' opinions

Agis Konkabaeva, CEO of tekmates

Soft skills

1. Leadership: your ability to make decisions and take responsibility as a leader. The ability to inspire and motivate the team.
2. Flexibility: the ability to quickly adapt to changes, see the big picture, and if necessary, quickly change strategy.
3. Networking: the ability to quickly establish communication with different people, build and maintain long-term relationships.

Hard skills

1. Strategic thinking and business planning, the ability to forecast and anticipate.
   Financial planning, understanding financial reports, budgeting, and cash flow management.
2. Project management: experience in planning, executing, and controlling projects, including risk and resource management.

Admet Akhter, founder and co-owner of the IT holding Akhter Studios, co-founder and CEO of the startup Introdex

Soft skills

1. Skills in selling, visualizing, and managing a team. The ability to sell is the most important, because without it, it will be impossible to take the first step: hire a team, attract investors. You won't be able to sell yourself as a founder, your idea, or the market.

2. Vision. It is important to be able to lead the team. Vision is formed by studying what others do and implementing your own ideas. You also need to be able to package this vision so that it can be sold to your team. It is necessary to understand how to solve complex problems in elegant ways and turn this vision into a product.

3. Management. A startup is a team effort; it is difficult to work alone. You need to be able to delegate tasks and trust people. Even if it is easier to do something yourself, in the long run, it is more beneficial to give the team the opportunity to learn and do it themselves. This will help your colleagues gain experience. Over time, it will become possible to coordinate the work of a group with the necessary skills.

Hard skills

It is important to be able to analyze information, numbers, and markets, and to calculate unit economics. The CEO of a startup often deals with finance and accounting, so it is necessary to study the corresponding tools, including investment ones.

Today, it is impossible to build startups without using neural networks, which help automate many routine processes and achieve results faster.
You may need to study legal aspects, such as drawing up contracts, although neural networks can also help with this.

Aziz Nasyrov, CEO, Product Manager at Yalla

Soft skills

— persuasion
— resourcefulness
— love for people
— fearlessness in the face of difficulties
— leadership
— problem-solving
— critical thinking

Hard skills

For a startup founder, it is important to master all techniques and technologies in various fields for successful project development, but for personal growth and strengthening their brand, they must become an expert in one of them.

Laura Vaygorova, CEO of Smartestprep

Soft skills

— self-presentation: without this skill, it is difficult to promote your product
— negotiation skills: many startups lose hope, not understanding the psychology of approaching partners and investors
— networking: without establishing new connections and communication, development is impossible. In the startup sphere, there is a referral system — someone recommends you to someone else, so you find clients, partners, investors, friends, and so on.
— written communication: startup founders communicate a lot with clients, partners, and investors. It is important to adapt emails and letters depending on the situation, because a strong text can make a big difference.

Hard skills

— financial management skills
— management skills
— ability to build a system. In the very beginning, there may be chaos in a startup. However, from the early days, you need to think about how to develop systematically, what departments and hierarchy will be. Without such order, it is impossible to build a billion-dollar company.