Building your Startup Team

Building yourStartup Team

Novel Approaches for an Agile World

Jeffrey Beir@jbeir, [email protected]

© Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC

Topics for Today

Start-ups are different than teams in big companies

The world is different today – opportunity for innovative team building

What are the unique requirements of my business?

How do I build my start-up team?

A couple of case studies


But I have seen this one…

Chairman CEO

CFO CTO VP Marketing & Sales

CSO


The World is Different

PeopleGeography

Markets

Technology

Biz Models

Financing

Pace


Traditional Company Building

Market/Focus

Mission

Core Values

10 yr vision

3 yr Goals

Strategic initiatives

Culture & Communication

s

Plans and Accountability

Defer DecisionsDeliver Fast

AGILE MindsetIterateLearn

Eliminate Waste

Agile Mindset:Vision to Viability

VisionFocusRisks

FlexibilitySequence

Value


So how does this all translate to building your team?

Attract awesome talent with complementary skills who share the excitement for the company vision

Focus and align the team on key initiatives for growth

Create a learning organization that crisply makes adjustments to the plan to adjust for risk

Build a cohesive team that celebrates the collective win over individual gain, and learns from failure

Embrace the difficult decisions to address mistakes and changes needed for growth

Foster a culture that embraces flexibility and thrives in good times and bad

Allow for Gen Y (and Z) to tap the energy and fresh thinking


Attract awesome talent

Build a company people want to work for, or better yet want to brag to their friends about

Hire for aptitude over experience

Look for passion

Diversity creates better decisions - need realists and optimists, creatives and analytics, …

Polish your hiring process, look for culture “fit”

Always be recruiting

It’s everyone’s job

Hire for great DNA over domain experience.

Don BulensCEO Unidesk

Former CEO, EqualLogic

Avoid the Press Release Hire. If you hire who has a long pedigree that you are so proud of – and you do a press release, you've probably hired the wrong person

Brian HalliganCEO

HubSpot

Why is hiring so important? Think back to teams you have run in the past. Think about the best person you ever managed... Think

about the worst person you ever managed... Want more of the former, and less (or none)

of the latter?

Paul EnglishFounder and CTO

Kayak

Recruiting all the time. Even when we had no openings, I was always recruiting.

Diane HessanCEO

Commnuspace

No passion? No job. Entrepreneurship is a quest. Founders are passionate - the team

must embrace and share the passion.




Focus and align the team

Gain alignment around proof points for the business and financing

Define the “MVP” for your company, your MVC

Insure clarity around today’s problems, and those that can wait for another day

Embrace a distributed team

Reward getting sh-t done, over face-time

The way people live and work has radically changed, so the way you manage them needs to radically

change. "The office" is an idea, not a place.

Brian HalliganCEO

HubSpot


Create a learning organization

Commit, but verify (again and again)

Track metrics and communicate them

Don’t automate/scale until it’s proven

Maintain humility and do “post-mortems”

A small change today is better than a big change tomorrow

Build just enough up front - be smart about scaling - and look for triggers

so you know when to build out.

Melissa LefflerVP Engineering

Objective Logistics

Adjust your process to fit your team, deployment, market stage, customers activity.


Objective Logistics


Build a cohesive team

Celebrate the collective win over individual gain

Confidentiality, trust works both ways

Learn from failure

Share the bad news, as well as the good news

Complete openness! I shared all of our numbers -- good and bad -- even when we barely had any

money left. I found that it relaxed people to know the truth, and it motivated them to help me. So, I felt less alone, and it helped to create a motivated

team.

Diane HessanCEO

Commnuspace

Have rituals. When things are ridiculously crazy, it is nice to be able to say, "and of course, it's Throwback

Thursday again."

Diane HessanCEO

Commnuspace

Trust is the foundation of any high performance team, and that without trust, no collection of great individuals can become a truly great team.

Trust is borne of truly knowing the members of your team, and in them knowing each other.

Tod LoofborrowFounder and Former CEO

Peoplefluent


Embrace the difficult decisions

We all make mistakes

Sometimes the growth exceeds the individual

Often the worse kept secret

While difficult, better for the common good

I firmly believe it can be respectful of the individual

Fire fast - we all make hiring mistakes, or have key people who don’t scale well, and try to compensate for their deficiencies. Poor performers and/or poor attitudes are poison – they drag down everyone.



Holding on to non-performers for too long. It lowers the standards

for everyone in the company.Diane Hessan

CEOCommnuspace

I took the management team through a "bond in the woods" ropes course to build trust and teamwork. We

climbed ladders in the mud and rain and did rope climbing which requires teamwork and trust. Drinking beers afterwards was a moment of bonding through our pain, but when we got back to the office the next

day - the toxic VP was still toxic, the silos were still silos, and we had accomplished nothing.

Tod LoofborrowFounder and Former CEO

Peoplefluent


Foster a culture that embraces flexibility

Defer decisions that can be deferred

Architect for uncertainty

Reward “taking the ball” and moving it forward

Focus on what you must do well, and outsource the rest

Execute fast (take smaller bites)

Create a parking lot

Outsource with care - build critical mass first, and flexibility/agility is

king in the early days.


Objective Logistics

Make every hire count in the beginning ... and feel pain before

adding.


Objective Logistics

In the beginning, you need utility players: people who will see a customer and then fix a problem, and then make coffee and then

help with internal training, and then get the mail. Later on, you need specialists.

Diane HessanCEO

Commnuspace


Allow for Gen Y (and Z)

Create a relaxed work environment

Make the executive team accessible to employees

Set up processes, but be flexible

Embrace Gen Y, don't fight them. If you make Gen Y's work in a Gen X culture,

they won't be happy. If you build a Gen Y culture, they'll be hyper-productive. We

need to get over ourselves and conform to them, not the other way around.

Brian HalliganCEO

HubSpot


So, how do I build my start-up team?

… taking into account your unique requirements around:

People – age, domain experience, skills

Geography – virtual, economics, timezone

Markets – international, US first, local, hyper-local

Technology – infrastructure, tools, manufacturing

Business model – distribution, revenue, sales, marketing

Financing – capital efficiency, sources, milestones


Building your founding team

Shared enthusiasm for the vision

Complementary skills/preferences, strengths/weaknesses

Aligned growth objectives

Trust them with your children

Disagree respectfully

In it, in good times and bad

Willing to step aside if needed


Dividing the Founder Pie

Contribution Weighting Founder 1CEO

Founder 2CTO

Founder 3CFO

The idea 3 50 50Technical Approach 2 100Prototype 1 100Business Plan 1 40 30 30Recruited team/advisors

1 50 50

Commitment 2 70 20 10Users/Customers 1 100Seed capital/customer funding

1 75 25

Role going forward 2 50 30 20Founder Ownership 655

47%58041%

16512%


A few case studies

HuePick - Sarah Gondela

LifeGuides.me – Phil Strazzulla

Six Foods – Rose Wang


Special Thanks To

Don Bulens, CEO Unidesk

Katherine Catlin and Bouzha Cookman, Catlin and Cookman Group

Paul English, Founder and CTO Kayak

Abby Fichtner, iLab

Brian Halligan, CEO HubSpot

Diane Hessan, CEO Commnuspace

Tod Loofborrow, Founder and Former CEO Peoplefluent


Questions?

Jeffrey Beir@jbeir

linkedin.com/in/[email protected]