Startup growth is fantastic, just like google, Facebook, Alibaba, and other big IT companies provide a new overview of the IT business. The startup is a new IT-based business built and pioneered for about three years. The project manager is a critical element in the startup run, starting with a CEO who first planned, pioneered, and built his startup. The role of a project manager is vital in building a startup, especially how cognitive ability/knowledge and emotional intelligence becomes the key to leading all the project and startup member to complete their project. This research aims to know the effect of emotional intelligence and cognitive ability on successful project managers and the effect of gender in moderating those variables. This research uses 100 project managers in a Startup company as respondents. The method used is Multiple Regression Linear. The results show that variable emotional intelligence and cognitive ability significantly influence successful project managers by about 76.3%, and there is no effect of gender in moderating these variables.