Get All Access for $5/mo

What Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues Taught Me About Leading a Company -- and 6 Tips All Entrepreneurs Should Practice Franklin's ideas provide a powerful blueprint for building a successful gaming company -- or any kind of initiative.

By Andrew Paradise

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Georgios Kollidas | Shutterstock

Benjamin Franklin is a role model for anyone building a gaming company.

He was brilliant. A live mind. Creative. Consider his magic square, one of the original American games. It's a Sudoku master's dream -- and a challenge for even a computer to invent. It's said that Franklin was so bored as a clerk at the Pennsylvania Assembly that he kept himself occupied by making up mind-twisting mathematical puzzles.

Related: How Shopify, Hubspot, Oath and Peapod Supercharged Their Company Cultures This Past Year

Franklin was also an extraordinary business and civic leader. He knew how to delegate, he knew how to network and he knew how to raise capital. He ran his own printing shop, then franchised his business to ward off the threat of local competition. He bought and then grew The Pennsylvania Gazette into one of America's most prominent newspapers.

So, when it came time to write down my mobile esports company's values, I looked to Franklin's 13 Virtues as inspiration.

The system Franklin devised (at the age of 20!) to develop his character doesn't seamlessly translate to today's world. Yet, with a thoughtful update, the core of Franklin's ideas provide a powerful blueprint for building a successful gaming company -- or any kind of initiative.

Here's how we've adapted and adopted some of Franklin's values at my company, Skillz.

Honor above all

I don't care if you're a hotshot engineer or the most incredible marketer on the planet -- we have a strict "no jerks allowed" policy. Being a jerk ruins cultures, and bad cultures ruin companies.

As part of our commitment to honor, we ensure fairness in our games -- which means stamping out cheating before it starts. We rate players accurately so that they're matched against others with equal skill. We dive into data to pinpoint aberrations and magical increases of skill that could indicate cheating attempts, and can even discover if players are cheating by how they swipe or hold a device.

In general, entrepreneurs and leaders should conduct themselves at work and at play as if everything they do will appear on the front page of The New York Times. In a world with omnipresent social media, those types of ramifications are more likely than ever.

Related: How You Can Use the Counterintuitive Genius of the Benjamin Franklin Effect to Your Advantage

Mission-focused

It's our mission to make every competitive experience as exciting as Game 7 of the World Series, bottom of the ninth, tie score -- and we inject that mission into all we do internally. We frequently test drive our own games with internal staff tournaments that boast prizes like Skillz swag but, above all, bragging rights. Also, all Skillz employees are required to play 35 games per week to ensure we're all assisting in testing out the latest and greatest content to optimize the experience for our 18 million players.

Live your mission, and you'll be far more likely to achieve it. If you're starting a new company, make sure your product or service is something you're passionate about. Just because you see an opportunity doesn't mean you're automatically going to be successful. There are a lot of great ideas out there, but you have to genuinely enjoy the time you spend at work to overcome all the challenges associated with building a thriving business. At Skillz, we hire people who are passionate about making gaming better and challenging the status quo. As you look to build your team, hire people who share your vision.

Willingness and balance

"I am a strong believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it," Franklin famously quipped. We're of the same mindset: We work hard to make incredible advances. As a result, we've been lucky enough to be named the fastest-growing company in America.

That said, while I slept at my desk several times at previous jobs in venture capital and private equity investing, those habits have been put to bed at Skillz. Why? I've finally learned that balance can make all the difference.

Related: By Failing to Prepare, You Are Indeed Preparing to Fail

As a leader, you should vigorously enforce a work-life balance. There may not be enough time in a normal workday to accomplish everything you want to get done at a startup, but you risk losing staff if your team burns out quickly from working too many hours. Skillz has an official "weekend whistle" at 5 p.m. on Fridays, and we enforce an email embargo until noon on Sunday. That ensures an uninterrupted 43 hours offline, which is a lot for startups! We also offer half-day "summer Fridays" in August and a generous PTO policy -- our staff takes an average of 21 days off per year.

Employee autonomy

Ben Franklin didn't have a set schedule, and he was one of the most productive people in history. In similar fashion, we don't schedule high school-style chunks of time all day. Instead, we trust our team to figure out a way to ace the test. It's about results, not work.

Another way to think of this is to treat everybody in your workforce as if they're CEOs. This isn't high school; we're all professionals. Entrepreneurs need to empower their teams and provide opportunities for ownership and autonomy so people can do their best work. This can be done by looking for ways to help employees grow and develop new skills, whether that's having the chance to run point on an important project or stepping into a different position.

Collaboration in all things

Franklin is known as an iconoclastic larger-than-life individual, but a closer look reveals almost every initiative of his was a team effort, from declaring independence from Britain to capturing electricity (more on that below). We embody that spirit of teamwork as we work in diverse teams across a fast-growing organization, and also when partnering with more than 13,000 game studios around the world. In an increasingly hyperconnected world, that collaborative spirit is more essential now than ever.

Related: 6 Pieces of Timeless Business Advice From Ford, Hamilton, Rockefeller and More

Frugality: Not cheap, but smart

In the modern era of enormous funding rounds, it's easy to slip into inefficiency. Given this omnipresent reality, we ask all of our employees to establish healthy financial habits for long-term success. (Franklin admitted difficulty in living up to this value and credited his wife, Deborah Read, in helping him stay the course. Another example of collaboration!)

Make sure your employees manage company money as if it's their own. CEOs should set clear guidelines and empower managers to spend funds that will have the greatest ROI for the company and move the business closer to achieving its goals.

Capturing lightning in a bottle

Many know the story of Ben Franklin and his "discovery" of electricity with a kite and a key. This example embodies many of his values: years of work, collaboration with friends and family (his son held the kite), frugality (it was just a kite, a key and a Leyden jar), and a clear mission to demystify electricity. The results are stuff of legend.

As I've learned from Ben Franklin, core values are vital to capture lightning in a bottle. Establish them early, and practice them often. Be like Ben. Create your own legend.

Andrew Paradise

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

CEO and Founder of Skillz

Andrew Paradise is CEO/founder of Skillz, a mobile esports leader. He previously founded AisleBuyer (sold to Intuit) and Double Picture (sold to MPA Inc.). At age 7 he learned to program by hacking a video game. Paradise founded Skillz to make games more fun for players and lucrative for developers.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Growing a Business

5 Effective Strategies to Boost Your Business's Online Presence

Boosting your online presence in 2025 is the key to success for businesses looking to grow. Working on your branding and reputation management is important to drive more sales and improve conversion.

Marketing

He Pitched His First Business at 12 and Sold a Company for 8 Figures When He Was 23. Here's This Gen Z Marketing Expert's Next Big Move.

Griffin Haddrill built a marketing empire working with artists like Justin Bieber and Lil Nas X. Learn how he tapped into Gen Z's digital culture and turned viral campaigns into a business model.

Business News

Apple Is Adding ChatGPT to iPhones This Week. Here's How It Works.

ChatGPT will take over questions that Siri can't answer.

Leadership

As a Leader, Take These 5 Steps to Bridge the Gap Between Innovation and Execution

Companies that want to turn ideas into action must align their people and listen to their customers.

Growing a Business

How to Spot Trends and Anticipate Market Shifts Before Your Competition

Discover how to identify disruptive trends before your competitors by mastering the art of anticipating market shifts. Learn strategies for staying ahead and gaining a competitive edge in business.