I am Batman

The founder's path where method meets principles and value creation follows

Photo by ActionVance on Unsplash

Inspired by some bright minds at globalventurenetwork.com (thanks Alper & Attila), this tiny essay is an extension of a recent presentation I gave at The Leap of Tech by How To Web in Bucharest/Romania.

---

The beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is that there’s no universal, guaranteed formula for success. Yet when we describe successful (tech) founders, we often put them on pedestals and drape them in supernatural traits, as if they were superheroes.

That’s a fallacy.

In a culture where perception threatens to become reality, the image of the super‑entrepreneur, an out‑of‑this‑world Superman/Superwoman, pushes us toward two unhelpful extremes: (1) “go big” embracing a distorted reality in which the world around us is divided into winners and losers and the sole aim of entrepreneurship is to attain unicorn status; or (2) simply “go home”, a retreat to the back seat born of the belief that, without superhero DNA, entrepreneurship isn’t for us.

I find it almost hilarious how fascinated many VCs are with unicorns, especially in startup ecosystems that aren’t yet mature, like much of Eastern Europe. Yes, privately held companies with $1B+ valuations can have a multiplier effect, inspiring employees to launch their own ventures. But if you zoom out, about half of unicorns are founded by repeat entrepreneurs with prior (non-unicorn) exits, and 80% of top-valued unicorn founders had either worked in another entrepreneurial business or founded a previous venture before their breakout success (see Endeavor report).

That suggests a different (but complementary) thesis: a mature ecosystem isn’t one that lucks into an unicorn, it’s one that produces repeat founders who compound experience, networks, and scar tissue into systemic value creation, some of which will eventually take unicorn shape.

Let’s flip the coin. Instead of myopically waiting for the next accidental unicorn to emerge, wouldn’t it be more productive to build the infrastructure that systematically increases the odds of unicorn creation? Imagine deliberately encouraging founders who’ve had “modest” exits ($10M, $20M, $30M, etc.) to try again with a second or third venture. In doing so, we’re not celebrating small wins as endpoints, but cultivating a repeat-founder mentality. And it’s that funnel, not lottery-ticket thinking, that ultimately yields unicorns and a resilient ecosystem.

That’s why, I believe, a better representation of a founder is Batman/Batwoman. Human, not alien. Vulnerable, not invincible. Perhaps a savior at times, but not a superhero. Bruce Wayne chooses to BECOME Batman. Clark Kent IS Superman. That brave decision of becoming makes all the difference. The journey demands discipline, and the transformation is grounded in the realization that success is a spectrum, not a single or fixed destination (the unicorn). Let’s unpack.

The Decision

The first defining act of a Batman‑founder is deciding to step onto the entrepreneurial path. Starting a company places a person at the center of an unwritten meta‑narrative, one that intertwines their own story with those of co‑founders, investors, employees, partners, and customers. In that sense, there’s no such thing as “self-made entrepreneurs”.

As Noam Wasserman shows in The Founder’s Dilemmas, would‑be founders face predictable pitfalls: launching without the skills or motivations to sustain success; focusing on business mechanics while ignoring personal implications; falling in love with an idea (or with “being a founder”) and avoiding objective evaluations; jumping in too early and courting avoidable failure, or waiting so long that golden handcuffs tighten with lifestyle and pay-check. He also highlights two primary entrepreneurial motives that repeatedly appear in his large‑scale study (10,000 founders throughout a decade): control (autonomy, influence, leading people) and wealth (financial gain).

Batman‑founders are not seekers of security. They’re risk takers, but with a purpose.

Evidence suggests that hyper‑optimism can be costly: Wasserman studies revealed that higher‑optimism entrepreneurs can see materially lower revenue and employment growth than their more clear‑eyed peers. The point isn’t to be cynical; it’s to temper ambition with reality.

In making the decision, Batman‑founders must keep their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Once the choice is made, life becomes an exhilarating mélange of determinism and free will that gives way to both excitement and uncertainty punctuated by moments of chaotic manifestation of passions (the most important source of entrepreneurial motivations).

The Destination

What keeps a Batman‑founder going through the failure‑success roller coaster isn’t a set destination (the unicorn status). It’s a posture.

“Criminals are like weeds, Alfred; pull one up, another grows in its place.”

Nihilism aside, the line reveals a more informative perspective: the founder’s role is an ongoing undertaking. The “destination” is revealed episodically through growth and it’s not a number. This isn’t about (artificially) moving the goalposts to please VCs. It’s about pushing the limits of who we can become and the value we can create, for others and for ourselves.

This is where internal vs. external motivators matter.

We often hear that “good is the enemy of great.” I don’t agree with that statement because it’s yet another false dichotomy fabricated to polarize perspectives. By definition, a perspective serves the purpose of complementarity toward an objective reality that we’re all trying to grasp. Yes, one perspective can be better than another, they’re not equally right or valuable, but let’s be serious: if the enemy of “great” is “good”, what can be said about “worse”?

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to understand that “good” is part of the sequence towards “great”. So, how about we treat “good” as being the neighbouring ally of “great”?

This isn’t license for complacency. It’s realizing that achieving a certain milestone does not mean it is the end of the journey, that we have arrived. It could very well be just the beginning of another one, perhaps yet to be defined on the basis of our previous accomplishments. Sometimes, the second mountain becomes visible only from the peak of the first.

Rather than defining success by counting externals (ARR, headcount, funding, etc.), Batman-founders refine internally sourced destinations around their potential for perpetual self-creation. Instead of being stuck on a pedestal and living off past glory, they form a habit of projecting a future that draws them to venture farther, anchoring their success less in doing something great (winning no matter the costs) and more in becoming someone great(er).

That is a Batman‑founder’s worthy destination: not a unicorn valuation, but a repeatable, integrated way of operating, coherent across ventures and across one’s life.

The Discipline

Between decision and destination lies a gap and in that space lives discipline.

Many in startup land hear “discipline” and picture corporate bureaucracy. That’s not what I’m advocating for; rather, discipline as the practice of entrepreneurship, the healthy fundamentals required to build durable, compounding value with and for others. Intention, reason, behavior, and action must all align toward a chosen result. It’s the craft of consistently doing the right things for the right reasons.

Value is not an inherent attribute of a Batman-founder, but an emergent property of practice: the systematic testing of character at the limits, where method meets principles.

Consider a familiar scenario: a startup stretches the truth (nicely put) about its platform being AI-powered to land a big customer. Is that a good outcome? Commercially, maybe yes. Is it disciplined? No, because the result rests on deception. If conduct contradicts the reality (or team’s values), the inconsistency erodes trust and culture. That’s not discipline; it’s drift.

Conversely, one can do the right things for the right reasons and still lose a deal, perhaps a cheaper competitor grabs it. Was that miss caused by discipline? Of course not. Discipline doesn’t guarantee favorable outcomes; it builds a repeatable way of operating that connects the decision to found one or more startups with the lifelong destination of becoming a great founder.

A final nuance: some argue that ethics has little to do with startups (“move fast and break things”, says Mark Zuckerberg), that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits”, as economist Milton Friedman argued in his book Capitalism and Freedom.

If we’re going to quote Friedman, let’s do it fully: “…so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Nobody is perfect, least of all startup founders (not even Batman). For some of us, entrepreneurship becomes a lifelong practice of self-realization. It’s less about chasing unicorn status and more about the discipline of creating (repeatable) value by honing our strengths and character in service of others.

That is the work. That is the way. That’s why we are Batmen and Batwomen.