Good People the Cornerstones of a Successful Startup
Having a solid team behind your venture is essential. The entrepreneur’s role is a lonely one, if you guys are anything like me you often have your head in the clouds dreaming of new ideas, we all need a reality check from time to time and this is where having at least one other person involved in the business gives much needed balance.
So who do I have? Well there is Carey Baird, Edge Ventures lead developer. He’s my voice of reason, he tells me straight if I am getting carried away with my ideas and ensures I stay focused on the task at hand. I also have Mark Parry who is very much like me, he shares my entrepreneurial drive and enthusiasm and often helps me to come up with new directions for my projects which I hadn’t realised myself.
Getting good people along side you not only grounds you and encourages you to focus, it adds a lot of strength to your pitch for investment. Investors look for a good team behind the project, people that have different qualities which complement each other and the founder.
Here’s the tricky thing, finding these good people! I have been involved with the internet professionally since 2004 and one of my main problems is finding good, reliable developers. Now there are many very talented programmers around but for your project to be a success you really need to find a programmer who has the self motivation to really think around problems using there own initiative. Of course my own experience is in web tech but the same concept applies to every business.
People make the business
In my experience it is better to wait until you find the right people, no matter how painful it is. This time last year I was looking to recruit an assistant to help me organise my web development workload and free up some time for me to build on projects I had started. I set aside a day for interviews but not one of the candidates had anything about them, now perhaps I was expecting too much but I was just looking for someone with a bit of spark about them, some drive to help me build my business and the willingness to roll their sleeves up and pitch in when the chips were down. In the end I got so bored with the interview process and was drained to the point that I just picked the best of a poor bunch. Let’s just say it didn’t work out and I learned a powerful lesson.
I have this view that if you find someone with that energy and enthusiasm but they are perhaps lacking in commercial experience then it may well be worth taking a punt on them. Drive, energy and enthusiasm can’t be faked (like some of the things people mention on their resumé). Of course it is better to find a Carey who has the energy and enthusiasm combined with the experience. It is tricky but it is well worth the effort to find these cornerstones.
When you find someone decent don’t be afraid of offering profit share incentives. Investors will appreciate that there are others with a vested interest in seeing the business become successful and your team will be dedicated to the cause. We can all learn a lot of lessons from Google in this regard.
