Investing is not an easy task and we – as a team – have come a long way to realize how hard it actually is. Through our quest to find those ideas, those products and those businesses that could make a difference in a startup-saturated society, we reached the realization that all success stories have a leading character and that person is what we would call “extraordinary”.

Every single person believes that they are somehow extraordinary, some even striving too hard to be different is order to stand-out, only to satisfy a high sense of self importance they believe to be entitled to. Sure, every single person is unique and – by all means – we do believe that the majority of people have the same capacity to thrive and succeed, no matter how small or how big that success might be. We do believe that extraordinary people live amongst us and that the traits that make them extraordinary are far from god-given gifts or innate talents.

In an attempt to define “extraordinary”, we collected below some of the traits that cover the distance between ordinary and extraordinary.

Extraordinary people face the same challenges in life as ordinary people do; however, their response to these challenges is different, driven by a set of values they chose to live by. While ordinary people sit back and make excuses for not doing all they could have done, extraordinary people act upon opportunities that come in their way, no matter how challenging they might be.

Extraordinary people thrive in dead-end situations. While for others get frustrated by failure and give up, for the extraordinary person a dead-end eliminates a wrong path and brings them one step closer to their success.

Extraordinary people understand there are not limits in their potentials, unless they are the ones to set them. Even if the dream is not clear, they are constantly pushing themselves to find it.

Extraordinary people live life by their own rules, standing up for what they believe in, never compromising their values, committed to make a difference and lead their lives through that difference.

Extraordinary people are not afraid of losing or of being wrong; after all set-backs is part of the process of them realising their dreams, as long as they put thoughts and words into action.

Extraordinary people also – if not more often – have thoughts of doubt creep in, but they chose not to entertain them.

Extraordinary people can live ordinary lives but they are open to experience the extraordinary they might find along the way. They understand they only get one life to live and it’s up to them to make it or break it. The mindset of choice is that anything is possible.

Extraordinary people might know a lot of things, but above all they are humble students in front of a teacher. As tempting as it is to limit one’s self in a perception of a certain intellectual elite, they always keep an open mind and treat all situations as opportunities to learn; they are humble enough and wise enough to acknowledge that they can always pick a piece of knowledge from every individual that crosses their path.

Extraordinary people enable creativity by committing to find solutions to the problems they face and they respond to this creativity by exploring and exploiting their new ideas, gradually mastering new fields. They are out-of-the-box kind of thinkers, allowing creativity and practicing critical thinking.

Extraordinary people do the work they want to do and not the work the world wants to impose on them. They are confident about what they think to be true, regardless of the consequences of their statements, and have no fear as their position is always based on facts and their internal scale of values.

These are the extraordinary people that lead out-of-standard life journeys, setting an example by the path they chose to follow, without them even meaning to do so.