One of the most important lessons I learned during my corporate career was that leadership is often overrated and team construction is massively underrated.

Throughout my years in large organisations, I saw many charismatic leaders succeed, but only when they were surrounded by people whose skills complemented their own weaknesses. The best leaders were rarely the best operator, salesperson, financial controller and strategist all at once. Instead, they were usually people who understood their own limitations and deliberately built balanced teams around themselves, enabling the team to make better decisions collectively than any individual ever could.

When I moved into entrepreneurship, I initially assumed that, as an entrepreneur, I needed to be involved in every decision and operational detail. However, because I wanted to launch multiple projects at once, this simply was not possible. Over the years, I found that the most successful businesses I was involved with were those where I deliberately stepped back from day-to-day operations, sat on the board, provided strategic direction and acted as a sounding board, whilst allowing talented operational leaders to run the business.

The reality is that, as a pluralist launching multiple businesses, I enjoy creating them far more than operating them. Some of my best investments have been those where I resisted the temptation to interfere and instead focused on helping great people become even better.

I also learned another lesson, which, even to this day, I wish were not true. The team is far more important than the idea itself, so park your ego, Steve and focus on finding the team.

Throughout my career, I have built what I call my “ideas shelf”. It exists both physically and mentally, containing hundreds of business ideas, observations, market opportunities, and commercial concepts I have collected over decades. Some are good ideas, some bad, and some are potentially brilliant.

However, what I have learned repeatedly is that taking a brilliant idea off the shelf and trying to force it into existence without the right people around it almost always ends badly. Conversely, I have seen average ideas succeed spectacularly because the team executing them was strong and could simply pivot around the inevitable obstacles that nobody had seen at first.

This lesson feels more relevant today than at any other point in my career because artificial intelligence is changing the economics of entrepreneurship faster than anything I have previously experienced. AI is fundamentally reshaping demand channels, changing customer behaviour and giving entrepreneurs capabilities that would have required entire departments only a few years ago. Today, one talented founder supported by AI can perform work that previously required teams of developers, marketers, researchers, analysts and customer service staff.

However, despite all the headlines suggesting that AI will replace people, my own experience so far suggests something rather different. AI superpowers talented people, but it does not replace ambition, judgement, industry knowledge, leadership or commercial instinct. The human operating the AI remains the critical ingredient.

The exciting consequence of this is that we can now build businesses with fewer people than ever, raise less capital than ever, and move faster than ever. However, there is still one thing that technology cannot solve, which is finding the right person to lead and champion an opportunity.

For me, the reality is that I now have more opportunities than people. Across our various AI initiatives, I have accumulated a growing backlog of projects that I genuinely believe could become substantial businesses. The constraint is no longer technology, capital, or ideas, but finding ambitious, capable people who want to build something meaningful.

At the same time, I recognise that joining an early-stage business is risky, particularly for those with mortgages, families and successful corporate careers. That is why I have developed a more pragmatic model, in which rather than asking someone to jump off a cliff and commit full-time on day one, I am perfectly happy for projects to begin as side hustles alongside existing careers until there is clear evidence that the opportunity is gaining traction and has sufficient funding to support meaningful founder salaries. Ironically, this approach also significantly reduces cash burn during the most vulnerable stage of any startup.

Equally, I recognise that not everybody joining a new venture is necessarily looking for another full-time executive career. Some of the most valuable people I have worked with have been those approaching the end of their careers, who possess extraordinary experience, industry contacts and commercial wisdom and who are willing to mentor and support the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Through our AI incubator model, we now have opportunities to combine experienced industry veterans with talented younger people who have the energy, technical skills and ambition to build the businesses of the future.

So perhaps I have finally reached the stage where I must admit that I do not need more ideas. I do not need more technology. I probably do not even need more businesses.

What I need is more people.

People with sector expertise, ambition and operational experience. People who want to build something exciting whilst having a bit of fun along the way.

So, if you have ever thought you could run a business better than those currently running it, if you have expertise that deserves a bigger opportunity, or if you simply fancy building something interesting during one of the most transformational periods in business history, perhaps you should email me at se@steveendacott.co.uk to arrange a highly confidential conversation.

After all, the next great business on my ideas shelf might just be waiting for you.