Behind every great company is a great team
Ideas are easy, execution is everything. We know that people and leadership is ultimately what will make or break a business, and we spend considerable time and resources making sure we back the best founders. Once invested, the key is to understand our founders’ superpowers and needs, and how to best support them in realizing their vision.
To unpack what that means in practice, we sat down with Anna Stenberg, Kinnevik’s Chief People & Platform Officer, and a former entrepreneur herself. We talked about why our founder and team due diligence is a central pillar of Kinnevik’s investment process, and how a strong and enduring investor-founder relationship can be a real win-win.
Why is founder and team assessment so important to the investment process?
Behind every challenger company is a founder or founding team whose ability to execute ultimately determines the outcome. Market opportunity and product matter, but the traits and abilities of the leadership is often the key reason a company succeeds. That’s why we ask not just “can this work?” but “does this company have the right team and leadership to execute, scale and make it become generational?”.
We have built a tailored, evidence-based approach to evaluating the people behind the business. Our goal is to understand whether a founder and their team have the mindset, skills, leadership traits and organisational potential to deliver on their strategy and vision.
We have applied this approach in over 100 due diligence processes, and one thing we have learnt is that people and organisations are almost always under construction. This isn’t about ticking boxes – it’s about opening honest conversations. What’s working, where the pressure points are, and how we as owners can be helpful and supportive when companies scale and face growth challenges.
When do you typically start engaging with founders?
Often long before we invest. If we are tracking a company, we try to get to know the team early, not just to assess but to begin supporting. This might mean helping with team composition, organization design, key hires, talent benchmarks, or cultural alignment.
When we do invest, the support deepens. Through our People & Platform team, we work with founders and their teams on scaling challenges – from talent acquisition, leadership development, and operating model to compensation frameworks and performance management. We also connect them with our global network of advisors, coaches and operators, providing access to the full expertise of our portfolio. For example, the collective knowledge among the Chief People Officers in our portfolio companies has become a unique source for best practices and learnings to tap into.
None of this is prescriptive. Our role is to offer support, not impose it, tailoring our involvement based on what each founder and team needs and wants. For some, that might mean deep engagement, for others, a sounding board. The founder always leads, and we are there when needed.
What kinds of leadership traits are you looking for?
We are not looking for a template, cookie-cutter, founder archetype. Rather, we focus on understanding the founder’s specific superpowers, spikes, leadership traits and the support systems they need to thrive in the context of their unique business case.
In early-stage venture, we focus more on backing potential: a founder’s clarity of vision, magnetism for attracting talent and an openness to evolve. At the growth stage, we also look for operational leadership, scalable decision-making, and whether the team is built to sustain complexity.
Across both, there are some traits we look for in every process, the most important of which is self-awareness. Founders who are conscious of their strengths and weaknesses and use that understanding to build the right team around them. Self-awareness is not about humility but about knowing which superpowers to lean into, and what complementary skills and perspectives are needed to perform at the highest level.
Resilience is equally critical. Can they withstand pressure, navigate setbacks and keep their teams aligned through uncertainty? Not in a single moment, but over the long haul. We look for founders with the stamina and ambition to build lasting companies – those who are in it for the long run and not for a quick exit.
We also look closely at their ability to attract exceptional talent, empower and retain them through different phases of growth, and develop them into high-impact leaders and specialists.
What kinds of people-related challenges do founders typically face?
Aligning the team with the strategy is a big one. A strong vision needs the right team, structure and capabilities behind it. As companies scale, culture and structure often struggle to keep pace. We frequently support founders in managing the complexity of growth — helping them avoid organisational bloat, clarify leadership responsibilities, and ensure the operating model stays aligned with strategic goals.
Hiring based on brand over relevance is another common pitfall - impressive titles don’t always translate to impact. Especially in early-stage scaleups, executional ability in an entrepreneurial and fast-moving environment matters most. Seasoned corporate leaders from big brands who lack such experience and who have been too far away from the weeds often miss the mark. They tend to need big teams to execute which can lead to bloated organisations. We help teams define what "great" looks like for a given role, and how to assess for it.
Getting the right leaders in early is critical. These people will shape not just the strategy but culture, hiring and decision-making. However, hiring superstars is only the beginning – there is also a need to put as much focus on the modus operandi of the leadership team and how the team members work together. Underinvesting in team effectiveness and not setting clear expectations and deliverables can create issues down the line.
Cultural drift is another challenge. Values can fade as the company scales. We help assess how well the founding values are being reinforced through behaviours and leadership across the organisation, and help teams preserve alignment through change. At the same time, the culture and DNA of the business needs to evolve as the company scales, so it is not about protecting the culture from changing at all. It’s about consciously nurturing it.
How do you support founders scale their leadership as the organisation grows?
A common leadership challenge is navigating the shift from doing to delegating without losing the founders’ ability to leverage their edge and superpowers across the organisation. This is very tricky and there is no textbook success recipe or model to be applied. Each founder and each business are unique, and the leadership approach needs to be tailored to leverage the superpowers of both the founder and their team members as the organisation grows.
Exchanging learnings and experiences with other founders and CEOs who’ve done similar scaling journeys is often appreciated among our founders. So is having a support system of entrepreneurs, seasoned CEOs and advisors who help bring perspective and guidance.
How do you support founders in tough times?
We know growth journeys are rarely linear. There are always rough patches – missed quarters, strategy shifts, restructuring. These moments demand resilience and focus – not just from the founders but also from us as investors.
Our aim is to support founders through organisational change, to navigate transitions and to stay clear-eyed under pressure. We help them keep a long-term focus, which is particularly important at times of turmoil when many stakeholders are pushing for short-term gains.
What do you hope founders take away from working with you and your team?
Our goal is to add value every step of the way. We meet founders where they are and tailor our approach based on their needs. It is about helping them navigate the things that keep them up at night – hiring, culture, scaling – and knowing they always have someone in their corner.
