What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur?

We studied 7,000 entrepreneurs, comparing their attitudes to their business results. The insights were surprising.

- MARKUS OVER AND SPENCER GREENBERG

What's more important for a startup's success: marketing or execution? Your answer may predict how successful you'll be.

Our organization, called ClearerThinking.org, surveyed 7,000 entrepreneurs on their personality traits and attitudes toward business. Then, we compared that data with their actual business success. We wanted to know: What really makes for a successful entrepreneur? And can it be predicted?

Some of what we found was expected. For example, successful entrepreneurs were more likely to be better educated, more comfortable with risk, better at managing stress, proactive, enthusiastic, open to critical feedback, and extroverted.

But we also found some unexpected nuance. Here, we break down three surprises.

1/ Marketing vs. product

Let's return to our opening question: What's more important-marketing or execution?