Be An Executioner, Part 2: Building Your Team
The management team. The human behind your bubbling thoughts. The breathing life of your conceptual project. The soldiers, aggressively fighting to win the idea war.
Your team is, by far, the most important aspect of execution. A fantastic idea is worthless with a lousy, unbalanced team. But, even a mediocre idea can be executed brilliantly with a power squad and the right guidance.
Here are the concepts you should consider in your team execution:
1. Balance: Rarely are individuals skilled developers and marketing / business savvy. Even when they are, which is not too often, it’s important to balance the rest of your team. From what I’ve experienced, extremely early-stage technology start-ups rarely need more than one business guy. But, they will need one as they progress.
If you’re team consists primarily of two or three programmers, it’s probably wise to have an individual poised in leadership, finance and marketing to bring in as the voice of the organization. If you’re team has two or three business guys (without computer science backgrounds), and only one developer, this to me sounds imbalanced (for a tech start-up).
From what I’ve seen, a quality balance is to have one pure-developer, one-pure business and marketing guy, and possibly someone right in the middle who can plug holes on both ends. A team with an abundance of skills is not nearly as powerful as a team with complementary skills.
2. Coachable: Your team needs to be able to take and apply advice. More importantly, your team needs to know how to react to constructive criticism. Reacting to criticism is how your business will develop. Working on an early-stage start-up is a bumpy road, and chances are your idea will morph drastically from its original conception.
The only way this will happen is if your team is coachable. The start-up community is founded on relationships. Business relationships, especially in the start-up world, are only beneficial if your team can adapt and react to change.
3. Motivation: You need to be a certain type of person be an entrepreneur, and you also need to be a certain type of person to enjoy working in an entrepreneurial environment such as a start-up. It requires massive amounts of perseverance, and even a little ego. Paul Kedrosky told me that:
You really need to scratch your own itch, if you’re an entrepreneur. What bugs you? What would you like to see changed? What things would you like to change at the confluence of capital markets and technology?
More broadly, be sure you want to be an entrepreneur. It’s a giant pain in the ass, and requires a very special person who has a high tolerance for pain, frustration, and dead-ends.
If you’re team is not motivated, then your execution will fail. But, it’s important to consider factors outside the psychological mindset of your team as well. Is someone on your team in a heavy relationship, or planning to have kids? There is nothing wrong with either of these things, but they can get in the way of a successful venture. I’m not saying they should be avoided either, but you should be weary about anyone on your management team that has heavy outside responsibilities. This may drain their motivation.
4. Good Friends / Family: I just won’t do it. If you value your relationship, there is a very high chance that it may go sour when money and business become involved. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Keep it separated, at least at first.
5. Decisions: Decision making falls under the category of trust, but in a start-up, most of the trust comes down to allowing others to make decisions on behalf of the team. Allowing others to make decisions for you took me the longest to get used to. There will be certain points in working on a start-up where time is so critical, that you need to be comfortable with others on your team calling shots for the whole team (instead of always checking in). If your team is balanced, it’s likely that the decisions your teammates are making will allign with the decision you would have made in the same situation.
