How to make it in America: the hidden rules and personality dynamics that really shape outcomes

We've all heard the stories, right? The lone genius, the perfect timing, maybe just pure grit. 

But when it comes to startups actually making it, what really moves the needle? There's so much advice and opinion out there, but what if the science points somewhere else? Can we actually predict startup success based on who the founders are? And is this actually a hidden cultural operating system international founders run into when they try to make it big in America?

If you search online for successful founder traits, you get a lot of conflicting information. Is it three things, seven personality types, or 50 traits? 

The claim from researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia is that success is linked to five specific founder personality types: operators, accomplishers, leaders, engineers, and developers. 

The researchers used a machine learning algorithm trained on over 21,000 startup founders’ Twitter posts, building on a method from 2019 that looked at language patterns. Their model distinguishes successful founders using Crunchbase data like funding, acquisitions, and IPOs with 82.5% accuracy. 

These different archetypes will be familiar to anyone who has been in the vicinity of startups for any length of time – the fighter who just pushes through, the systematic operator, the leader with the vision, the detail focused engineer.

The interesting personality aspects common in successful founders were things less common in the general population, like a drive for variety and novelty, being more open to adventure, being less modest, and having higher energy levels.

Professor Paul McCarthy, the study’s lead author, argues that these personality traits are critical to elevating the chances of success. “We can see how this plays out in many notable examples,” Prof. McCarthy says. “The adventurousness and openness to experience of Melanie Perkins (Founder of Canva), the assertiveness and confidence of Steve Jobs, the exuberance and energy of Richard Branson, the calm under pressure Jeff Bezos, the discipline and focus of Mark Zuckerberg, and the trustworthiness of Larry Page and Sergey Brin underpin their company’s success.”

So what do international founders need to know about this personality-driven cultural landscape of American business?

When I moved to the US from Australia, I thought I understood American culture. I’d worked with US companies for a decade, helped Australian startups position themselves in the US market, and collaborated with many US-based founders and creatives. 

But when I actually moved here, I found it was a completely different operating system. The same words had totally different meanings, there were completely different ways of doing business, and different expectations of relationships. 

Firstly, US business culture seems to universally thrive on paradoxes, like demanding authenticity while simultaneously demanding a certain kind of performance. Or meritocracy — the American Dream — which often means success within familiar American credentialing systems. Your track record back home might get a polite nod, but investors, media, and customers are looking for familiar US reference points.

These aren’t flaws, however, they’re features that make the huge US economy function.

Secondly, it's not just about adapting your business practices — it's about evolving your identity, especially for founders where their personality is so tied to their brand. Adapting to the US means tweaking core parts of yourself to amplify those five personality traits of successful founders mentioned above, which can be tough for Australian and British founders who have been raised in a tall poppy culture. 

The international founders enjoying the most success in the US have been able to frame their wins in American terms. The 15-person team isn’t the headline — it’s growing revenue by 300% and serving 500 customers. Achievements need to be translated into metrics the cultural landscape of American business recognizes. 

Scale is another factor that creates a huge paradox. While so much common startup wisdom might say to start small and focused, the underlying expectation is about massive scalability, often right away. Even a clearly profitable niche business might get questioned as limited if the founder doesn’t lead the pitch with growth potential: we found product-market fit, and here’s how we’re going to scale. The big vision is key.

Community building is a very common phrase, especially post-pandemic when we’re in the heart of a widespread loneliness epidemic. But in the U.S. business context, it often means building strategic networks for mutual opportunities. It's less about a support group, more about an opportunity exchange. International founders need to share wins and look for connections in their professional communities, despite what that dreaded tall poppy voice is telling them, and establish professional connections based on mutual value. 

What about authenticity? They say be yourself, but what they often mean is to be an optimized version of yourself that fits certain professional templates. American authenticity in business is often closer to sophisticated personal branding — less raw honesty, more curated narrative, not necessarily burying your soul. Your struggles become learning experiences.

While this cultural business tango seems daunting, successfully navigating it opens doors to the huge advantages inherent in the US economy that make the adaptation worthwhile.

First, there’s incredible resource mobilization. Money and talent gets deployed fast and execution speed is weeks, not months. The “move-fast-and-break-things” mantra exists for a reason, and it has led to some of the biggest technological breakthroughs of our generation. Ship it, double down on what works, get rid of what doesn’t, rinse and repeat.

Second, reinvention is not only accepted, it’s encouraged. Changing careers and pivoting your business is more normalized in the US, and it’s seen as a sign of understanding and adapting to fast-moving market forces. You’re seen as a visionary, not a flip-flopper.

Third, optimism is a strategy. That positive can-do attitude genuinely creates momentum, almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. While neuro-linguistic programming may not be taken seriously by science, there’s a reason why the fighter and visionary archetypes were flagged as likely to contribute to success. 

And fourth, scale thinking. There's an inherent assumption in the US that solutions should work globally for millions, which pushes ambition and visionary thinking.

For international founders, adapting to the US business culture can feel like a permanent change to their professional self. While I’ve seen some genuinely become American in their professional style, others lean into a professional British or Australian identity by playing up certain perceived characteristics. 

The third way — a hybrid identity, holding on to core values, but learning to communicate effectively within the American cultural language — takes conscious effort and a clear strategy to navigate the ego recalibration. The effort to perform optimism when maybe you're naturally more cautious, or to constantly talk scale when your focus is sustainability, and reframing focusing on building proof points within an American context can create real identity dissonance if not approached through the lens of strategic US business anthropology. 

Success comes from understanding both these underlying systems — high-performing founder personality traits in the context of the cultural landscape of US business — and consciously adapting. It isn't just about the idea or sheer hard work. Those matter, but it's also about deeply understanding and optimizing who you are and how you operate within these specific, sometimes non-intuitive systems. It's learning to leverage forces that aren't always visible on the surface, whether those are internal personality dynamics or external cultural codes.

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