What makes a unicorn CEO? At the Make it in the Emirates forum, held at the ADNEC Centre in Abu Dhabi, three standout founders — Noor Al Tamimi (Founder & CEO, Shelex), Sky Kurtz (Founder & CEO, Pure Harvest Smart Farms), and Fahmi Alshawwa (Founder & CEO, Immensa) — shared honest reflections on the mindset, challenges, and evolution required to build billion-dollar businesses. Moderated by Aliya Al Marzooqi, Head of Data Analysis at the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, the discussion shed light on what truly separates unicorn founders from the rest.
Sky Kurtz opened the discussion with an honest admission: even unicorn founders are haunted by imposter syndrome. “You have a mentality of ‘I’d rather die than fail,’” he said. “This fear of failure, this external vision you’ve committed to — it becomes your fuel.”
Kurtz explored how founders generate internal drive, often rooted in early adversity or internalised pressure to prove themselves. “There’s a moment when the world makes you doubt everything. That’s when the great founders double down.”
Noor Al Tamimi echoed and extended this idea, framing success not as resolution but as reinvention. “The biggest challenge in business is success itself. Each time we reached a new milestone, it demanded a new version of yourself. What got us here wouldn’t get us further.”
This internal tension — between self-doubt and public triumph — isn’t a weakness. It’s part of what defines the unicorn mentality: the psychological flexibility to evolve, the humility to question yourself, and the resilience to keep going.
When pressure mounts, the true North Star is purpose. For Sky Kurtz, this sense of purpose goes beyond Pure Harvest’s smart farms — it’s personal, philosophical, and deeply emotional. When it gets really hard, he said, remember the ‘why’.
Kurtz referenced Simon Sinek’s now-famous framework “Start With Why” as a valuable tool for founders. That focus on purpose, Kurtz explained, is what carries founders through moments of doubt and exhaustion.
For him, the ‘why’ is about building something that improves lives — something physical, something real. He spoke about the satisfaction of creating “technology you can taste,” a reminder that even in a high-tech venture, the ultimate measure of success is human impact.
That clarity doesn’t just anchor the founder — it binds the team. “I think about the employees who gave me their lives,” he said, referencing a colleague who endured extreme conditions to keep the company’s mission alive. Purpose, in this sense, becomes more than motivation — it’s a contract.
Noor Al Tamimi shared a common trap: defining company values too early. She is not in favour of companies creating values before day one. Instead, values emerged from how the business naturally operated: as a happy, positive, wow-driven workplace. “We only codified them five years in — once we saw what truly made us different.”
Her advice? Let values emerge, live them daily, and hire people who already embody them. Culture, in this mindset, is retrospective — not aspirational.
Fahmi Alshawwa addressed the myths around hard tech entrepreneurship: people often think it’s easy to fund hardware — but that alone won’t get you to unicorn status. Scaling a capital-intensive, hardware-driven company with a small team is radically different from growing a software business. “You have to be innovative just to scale — it takes a different skill set,” he said.
Alshawwa emphasised that true exponential growth in hardware demands unconventional thinking, hybrid approaches, and a willingness to challenge investor expectations.
Kurtz introduced a rule every founder should remember: assume your business will perform 40% worse — and 40% better. He warned that “you can grow yourself into bankruptcy.” Whether it’s a sudden surge in demand or a longer-than-expected timeline, founders often underestimate how capital-intensive scaling can become. You need to stress-test your model in every direction.
“The biggest challenge in business is success itself,” said Al Tamimi. Every milestone forced her to reinvent herself. What works to launch a startup often doesn’t work to scale it. Unicorn founders must continuously evolve, adapting their leadership style to the needs of the business at each stage.
Alshawwa echoed this: “You have to be dogmatic in your purpose, but humble in your limitations.” Finding that balance — and knowing when to slow down, especially during international expansion — can make or break your trajectory.
One of the most candid points made during the panel was the growing reluctance among investors to back solo founders. The key person risk is just too high.
Unicorns, the panellists agreed, are not built by lone heroes — they’re forged by tightly aligned teams with diverse strengths. A single founder may have vision, but without operational support, strategic challenge, or emotional resilience from a trusted partner, the journey becomes far more volatile.
Whether it’s a co-founder, a first hire who balances your weaknesses, or early advisors who bring industry expertise, the most successful entrepreneurs are those who deliberately assemble people around them who are not just talented, but complementary.
More and more, top-tier venture funds are adopting this philosophy. Unless the founder is a proven serial entrepreneur, going solo is increasingly seen as a structural vulnerability — both for execution and scale. The unicorn mentality isn’t about doing it all — it’s about building the right team to go further, faster, and with fewer blind spots.
Too often, people see a founder stepping back as a failure — but the best founders know when the company has outgrown them. Letting go isn’t weakness — it’s vision. A unicorn mentality isn’t just about persistence; it’s about self-awareness, adaptability, and the courage to let your creation evolve beyond you.
Author:
Alice Weightman is the Global Head of Hanson Search and leds on the GCC C-suite Executive Search and recruits for a number of PE and investment funds in the region supporting them on C-suite and leadership talent.
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