Archetypical Roles in Startups: Eight Personality Traits You Need in Your Founding Team

Founding a startup is a challenging endeavor that works best in a well-balanced team. Different thinking styles are needed throughout the founding journey. Archetypes are deeply engrained templates in the collective unconscious and can be used to reveal the hidden aspects of social interactions within teams. This book employs an archetypical personality test to uncover the eight most significant team roles needed in a startup: the leader, the mentor, the artist, the friend, the hero, the femme fatale, the rebel and the manager. The artist, for example, always finds unconventional solutions, the femme fatale attracts support for the idea, and the hero is undaunted in the face of setbacks. Archetypical roles can manifest in individuals or at the group level, and they can and should change throughout the journey. With the included personality test, this book offers entrepreneurs, investors and mentors alike a tool to improve the interpersonal processes in startup teams.

Vanessa Miller is a Research Associate for Circular Economy and Entrepreneurship at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences (HNU), Germany. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary American Studies from University of Tübingen, Germany and an executive Master of Business Administration from HNU. She has lived in the USA and Kenya and has work experience in international education. At HNU, she is responsible for collaborative projects with African partner universities, among others for the joint development of a master’s degree in Circular Agro-Economy at University of Rwanda. Her research interests include circular economy, sustainable entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial teams and intersections of culture and business models.

Prof. Dr. Jens U. Pätzmann teaches Marketing, Branding and Strategy for startups at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences, Germany. He received his doctorate from the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Jens U. Pätzmann is a co-director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and is one of few researchers investigating archetypes and their relevance to the startup ecosystem. Also, he is a member of the Africa Institute. His international activities focus on Europe, Israel, and Kenya. Jens U. Pätzmann has been applying archetypes to the practice for twelve years and has published extensively on exploiting archetypes for marketing, branding and organizational behavior.