Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Anthony Stevens
If you’re thinking of starting a company and spend any time reading startup advice given by seasoned entrepreneurs, one core theme appears over and over again: Build a great team. Starting a company is hard work. It’s confusing. It’s unpredictable. It requires patience as well as decisiveness. Dave Schappell described it as “back-breaking” at the recent StartupDay 2009 conference, and it’s true.
You can address all these challenges (and the dozens of others I didn’t mention) by putting together a great team the start. Sometimes, that means just one other person to work closely with. Sometimes it means a much larger group of people; it depends on your situation and the type of company you’re planning to build. Regardless of the number, as a startup founder you’re looking for people who meet the following criteria:
Are self-starters. Your partners should all be able to work independently, make good decisions, and get fired up and enthusiastic, without you having to direct them. In particular, the people you want to avoid when you’re building your startup are those who say “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” (The engineering-specific variant is “Just put it in the spec and I’ll build it.”).
Are trustworthy. This one should almost go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. You need to be able to trust your team implicitly. They should be honest, open, be willing to admit mistakes, be willing to accept responsibility, and not make excuses.
Have complementary skills. A good team is composed of people who complement, and not copy, each other. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t partner with an engineer if you are an engineer yourself. But try to build a well-rounded team that brings lots of disparate skills and experiences to the table. You’re less likely to go off the rails, and the diversity of opinion will help when you’re facing tough choices.
Are doers. I love Joel Spolsky’s term “architecture astronaut”. This is a person who dreams up big, complicated, yet ultimately impractical implementation ideas. You don’t want astronauts on your startup team. You want people who can roll up their sleeves and Get Things Done.
Are adaptable. A startup journey is an adventure. You might even say it’s like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get. Get people on your team who appreciate the variety, the unpredictability, the newness. The reason I said “Step 2 doesn’t matter” is that your business will likely look a lot different in five years than you predicted on Day 1. Expect it. Deal with it. Leave behind the whiners, the inflexible, the “this isn’t what I signed up for” group, and the glass-is-half-full crowd. Seek out those who see every change as a new opportunity.
There’s one aspect to building a team that I haven’t talked about, but which sits in the mind of your first customer, your first investor, and your future team: You have to be passionate and committed to convince these stellar individuals to join you. Passion attracts passion. If you’re passionate about your idea, and willing to do what it takes to make it a reality, you can close the deal with your first teammate, and then your second, and so on. If you can’t convince that first potential partner that your startup is worth their time, effort, and sacrifice, you should probably be thinking hard about your plan, your product, or your reasons for wanting to start a business in the first place.
I like one of Andy Sack’s pet phrases as applied to building your startup team: Get Fucking Aggressive. If you’re a solopreneur, what could you be doing TODAY to find and convince others to join up with you? Do it.
