Traits of a 10x hustler:

These people are very rare, but the impact they have is enormous. Typically the common traits are:

– immediately personally impressive. People have a sense they’re meeting someone special and go out of their way to help them, independent of context. The 10X hustler knows that often they only get 5 minutes and they make it count.

– a hacker mentality. always looking for a more scalable shortcut. Shaival Shah, another distribution maestro put this better than I can here in his post on how a great BD person canibalises their own function

– great at creating ecosystems around the things that excite them. Dave & Music Hack Days are a good example

– able to thrive in a wide variety of contexts and get on with exceptional people from all walks of life. No one would ever describe a 10X hustler as a ‘suit’, or a business guy. And probably not a hustler. They’d most likely describe them as awesome.

– on a path to running their own business. They’re fascinated by product, technology, growth hacking, fund-raising and any and all aspects of building an enduring company. If they’re not a co-founder then often a BD role at a start-up is a stepping stone to running their own company.