Hunger is Not Enough

The distinction between working hard and playing to win is key

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"What is the most important trait for a founder to possess?"

Ask this question to any ten investors and you'll get various answers. But one word comes up more than any other:

Hunger.

The hunger to win.

The hunger to push beyond every obstacle.

The hunger to prove people wrong.

They're all wrong.

While these are all certainly important traits, I believe the most important trait is competitiveness.

Indeed, you might be wondering what the difference is between competitiveness and hunger. On the surface, both traits indicate a level of drive and a need to persist against all odds, but they are quite different under the hood.

Hunger alone drives you to grind endlessly.

Hunger alone will lead to directionless effort and exhaustion without result.

Hunger alone can never be satiated.

Competitiveness goes beyond this. It's the innate and obsessive need to win, to dominate, and to outperform. It requires context and comparison.

The nuance here is really around where this competitiveness is directed.

Competitive drive can be both a virtue and a vice. When directed internally, using comparison to drive team performance, often creates a toxic culture and misaligned incentives. Some startups succeed despite this internal competition, but they succeed despite it, not because of it.

External competitiveness manifests differently.

It means having a deep understanding of your competitive landscape - not just surface-level feature comparisons, but truly understanding why competitors make the strategic choices they do and how you're meaningfully different.

It means finding second place physically impossible to accept, not from ego, but from understanding that many markets naturally consolidate to one or two winners.

And perhaps most importantly, it means having the right reaction to competition - neither denial (read as “I have no competitors”) nor anxiety, but strategic clarity about how to allocate resources and turn market obstacles into advantages.

This is why competitiveness becomes such a powerful force multiplier for all other founder traits. Resilience without competitiveness just means you'll endure longer without winning. Resourcefulness without competitiveness means you'll find creative solutions that don't necessarily matter. Relentlessness without competitiveness leads to endless execution without strategic direction.

In the end, it's not enough to persist, create, or push forward. It is not enough to simply exist.

You must win.

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Abhi