As a veteran Certified Master Business Coach in Phoenix who has launched over a dozen startups myself and mentored hundreds of early-stage founders, I know the challenges entrepreneurs face in making professional experiences translate on resumes. But, given unique value offerings, conveying the proper stories and metrics well is crucial when fundraising, recruiting top talent, and applying to accelerators.
To truly differentiate themselves, founders need a resume to showcase their standout qualities – here’s how to do it.
Defining an Entrepreneur Resume
Whereas most resumes showcase educational background and relevant work histories, entrepreneur resumes highlight elements like:
- Key Ventures – Any current and past founded companies or side hustles and quick stats like funding raised, revenue, users, etc.
- Personal Traits – Values, motivations, and work styles that showcase entrepreneurial grit and perseverance.
- Domain Expertise – Specific specializations or industries played into via past projects and roles.
- Leadership Abilities – People and project management at various scales revealing strategic talent and operational strengths.
- Technical Capabilities – Specific hard skills around coding, analytics, design, writing, etc., leveraged delivering products.
Show Don’t Tell Traits
While anyone can claim perseverance or creative skills on paper, entrepreneurs must demonstrate these x-factors through concise, compelling examples – show, don’t tell. Anecdotes should feature obstacles overcome, risks taken, and outcomes achieved, revealing true founder fire.
Rather than stating “relentless hustler” or “creative problem solver” like typical resume cliches, compelling entrepreneurs select sharp anecdotes, bringing those strengths to life. For example, perhaps while launching a scrappy bootstrapped startup, quick revenue problems emerged, requiring ingeniously stretching limited resources to still deliver core offerings and retain users.
Details on the clever cost optimizations made despite fiscal constraints, along with metrics showcasing minimal user losses, demonstrate creativity under pressure no generic claim could. The art of entrepreneur resume writing involves curating those specific storied examples and quantifying accomplishments showcasing founder fire.
Quantifying Past Success
Venture capital investors are funding early-stage concepts back teams as much as ideas, looking for evidence of hustle and prior wins. This means entrepreneurs must quantify past accomplishments at other startups and roles through metrics like:
- Total Funding Raised: How much capital was directly sourced via investor pitches and relationships
- Revenue Growth Percentages: Powerful indicator of ability to sell and build leveraging products
- Peak Users/Customers: Conveying audience or market traction achieved
- Platform KPI Boosts: Percent improvements on key web/app metrics like conversions, retention, etc.
The Bottom Line
Just as critical to nailing the storytelling components is optimizing formatting on entrepreneur resumes – clean sections, powerful action verbs, easy-to-scan bullet points, and strong calls-to-action. Design elements should not distract but rather support key details popping.
I coach Phoenix founders on polishing both content and style when assembling sharper professional profiles. So, you’ve got a game-changing idea – now what? Let’s translate your entrepreneurial dream into metrics that resonate with potential partners.
