I had the unique honor and privilege of attending FoundersNetwork annual Summit 2018 with amazing entrepreneurs like Lisa Shields of @Hyperwallet and Christina Sass from Andela.

The attendees came from diverse origin stories; from seed to billion dollar exits, versatile backgrounds, countries and industries from entertainment, finance, social networking, delivery logistics to non-profits all under one clear blue California sky in picturesque Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Here are six secret superpowers I learned as a result of some deep and honest conversations at this prestigious event.

1. Humility: Ego is soul fat. Self awareness of our strengths and weaknesses helps differentiate reality from ego. When our ego is out of the way, we can open up about our true issues, pursue honest conversations and come across solutions that help us grow in a very real sense. Case in point: Lisa Shields, a veteran entrepreneur who exited $400M with Paypal stated her goal at the summit was to learn from all these great people. We are all lifelong students of Entrepreneurship.
2. Relationships:Deep relationships and really caring about others leads to listening and uncovering pain points. This leads to much more effective solutions that really address underlying problems of our customers, employees, customers, friends and family. In the midst of heady technological revolution, let’s remember at the end of the day, people
   use products. Lifelong relationships deliver value in compound interest. FoundersNetwork supports lifelong peer to peer mentorship and I can personally attest to the fact that each year, the benefits multiply exponentially.
3. Mentorship:The secret superpower of Silicon Valley is simply helping each other unreservedly according to Nitin Pachisia of Unshackled Ventures.We are here because of those who helped us. And we pay it forward helping others without expectation thus creating value for the future. Without any expectation is key. Simply by helping others ideate and solve problems in their own ventures, we clarify our own thinking and incidentally grow as well. Everybody wins. When you put something great out there in the universe, the universe gives back exponentially.
4. Giving: PledgeOnePercent has signed on thousands of companies like @salesforce who devote 1% of their time, equity or product. Sean Plaice, Co-Founder of Postmates mentioned an amazing way his company figured out a way to deliver good food that would be otherwise thrown away at night to needy people by their own delivery network. Several students mentored by company volunteers ended up becoming talented full-time employees. Giving can be much more than just writing a check. It can also be leveraging your talent, time and resources. And it can make a real difference.
5. Quality:Quality is important in hiring. You pay for good talent now or you pay later in a very different way. Spend more, if you can, on critical talent. Quality also is a leading indicator for investors looking for metrics. Are customers and your team excited about your upcoming product or service? Rather than cooked up metrics designed to make your startup look better than it actually is, the qualitative metric of customer and team excitement can sway an investor into making an investment.
6. Emotional Intelligence:Interestingly, @sasschristina ‏ who raised 81M for Andela (Andela scales high performing distributed engineering teams with Africa’s most talented software developers ), revealed that emotional intelligence can be a great indicator for hiring top software engineers. An emotionally intelligent engineer is able to ascertain from facial expressions or mood if the feature delivered has delighted the client or if something is still lacking. This quality is super important in an increasingly distributed and rapidly remote working world where interactions often happen on Slack and video chat.

Bonus aka One More Thing!

Nitin Pachisia described that CEOs who are nice are more likely to succeed because employees know they care. So let’s be nice on our way to success!