What kind of founder are you? Poet or Plumber?

Most founders are building with only half their superpower.

Yesterday I shared a story about two coaches who shaped my gymnastics career and how I think about startup teams. Today, I’m sharing something inspired by a brilliant episode of Hidden Brain, “Why Following your dreams isn’t enough.” with Shankar Vedantum and Huggy Rao.

Every company begins with a dream. Every successful one is built on the work. Most founders lean hard in one direction without realizing it. Which are you?

Q1: What energizes you more?
A. Imagining what could exist
B. Figuring out how it actually gets built

Q2: Your instinct in a crisis:
A. Pitch the vision that rallies the team
B. Roll up your sleeves and fix the underlying issue

Q3: Your biggest fear:
A. Losing momentum
B. Losing control

If you answered mostly A → You’re a Poet.
Mostly B → You’re a Plumber.

The Poet Founder: Poets bring meaning, magic, ambition, identity and movement. They see further than others. They create energy people want to follow.
Their risk: Poets sometimes don’t know how to do the work underneath the vision. When execution lags, frustration grows.

The Plumber Founder: Plumbers understand the pipes. They build systems that sustain growth. They know how things actually work —and why they break.
Their risk: When plumbing dominates, iteration replaces exploration. Stability replaces spark.

What’s interesting is that founders tend to hire people just like them. But teams with complementary skills raise 30% more funding. Balance isn’t nice to have — it’s a multiplier.

You can’t build momentum of scale sustainably unless both sides evolve together in parallel.

This creates:
✨ operational alignment
✨ better decision-making
✨ fewer piecemeal “tweaks”
✨ clarity on when you need to replace the plumbing, not patch it
✨ the ability to scale without losing the soul of the business

What to do next:

1️⃣ Recognize your dominant style
Where do you naturally lead? Where do you avoid?

2️⃣ Assess your team for imbalance
Do you have too much poetry? Too much plumbing?

3️⃣ Hire (or borrow) for your gaps
This includes advisors, senior ICs, fractional partners, and collaborative experts.

4️⃣ Create shared visibility
Bring poets into operational reviews.
Bring plumbers into strategic conversations.
It will feel uncomfortable — that’s the point.

5️⃣ Build both the dream and the system, together
That’s where momentum becomes durable.

If this resonated, we help founders integrate vision and operations from day one.