The Team: Relentlessly Resourceful

The playbook cares less about credentials than about temperament. The traits that predict founder success are unstoppability, determination, formidability, and resourcefulness. Altman borrows PG's phrase: relentlessly resourceful. Smart but easily discouraged founders lose to slightly less brilliant ones who never stop finding a way.

Communication is called out as the most important rarely-discussed founder skill. A founder who can't explain the vision crisply can't recruit, can't sell, and can't fundraise, no matter how good the product instincts are.

Choose cofounders like you're choosing a spouse, because the failure mode is the same: cofounder breakups are one of the leading causes of death for early startups. The worst version is two people who met recently, expressly to start a company, with no history of working together under stress.