building your startup team
TRANSCRIPT
© 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
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But I have seen this one…
Chairman CEO
CFO CTO VP Marketing & Sales
CSO
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The World is Different
PeopleGeography
Markets
Technology
Biz Models
Financing
Pace
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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
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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
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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.
Don BulensCEO Unidesk
Former CEO, EqualLogic
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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
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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.
Melissa LefflerVP Engineering
Objective Logistics
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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
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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.
Don BulensCEO Unidesk
Former CEO, EqualLogic
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
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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.
Melissa LefflerVP Engineering
Objective Logistics
Make every hire count in the beginning ... and feel pain before
adding.
Melissa LefflerVP Engineering
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
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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
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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
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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
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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%
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A few case studies
HuePick - Sarah Gondela
LifeGuides.me – Phil Strazzulla
Six Foods – Rose Wang
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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