10 Tips for Building a Great Startup Team

So now, that you have a complete plan for your company, have you thought of your next step? Have you selected the right team for your business? Successful startups know that the staff will serve as the backbone of the company, and it is essential to have the right people in place to grow. If you are working to get the best team for your new startup, be sure to have a few names of people in mind who you know will be a good fit.

Before you begin with gathering the troops and investing into the company, you need to know some vital aspects of a successful startup team, and what they look like. Don’t overlook the importance of a well-functioning team, and avoid the most common mistakes that most startups make. Find the best in people for forming your perfect team!

To make the process easier for you, some tips have been shared for you:

1) Vision

The thing that separates a truly unique business with the ability to survive in the market is the vision of the staff. It is not worth it to have those team members who only think of the company in the short term. Instead, you should choose those employees who think like you, and work together to make a long-run success out of the startup. These are the main things that will make a business grow.

It’s important to get the right people and to be on the same page, so here are some tips that you can follow to get the best out of what you got:

• Assess the Current State – If you research to find out what everyone thinks about the state of the business, you may see that everyone thinks differently. This is when you would have to let them know the big picture.
• Adjust with Financial Goals – This is an important step to see where your business would go and how each member can work to reach it. Everyone in the institution would need to have a clearer idea to help the business to grow.
• Develop Long-Term Priorities and Initiatives – Don’t focus on short-term objectives and create hundreds of them. Instead, pick up long-term ones and share it with the organization, so that they know what they need to do.
• Build Confidence Through Near-Term Execution – Let the employees know where they stand and if they are doing things right, and what they need to correct. Give them benefits as well, to let them see the long-term success they have with you and the company.

With all this, you can either build a perfect team out of what you have or keep searching for those who have the power to understand your vision and can stick for a long time.

2) Comradery

While the company founders, products and metrics are crucial elements for a company, the importance of the company culture will lead the business to success or fail.

The culture of a company is not just the recreation room or the free snacks that are available in the company. It is also about forming an environment that compensates creative thinking and nourishes smart concepts. This is what attracts the proper team members and also what keeps these top talents in the team for a long time.

With the right people in the team that create a creative and productive work environment, the business would become a success in no time.

3) Focus

If anyone you know has been a part of a startup for some time now, they might have told you that startups can be exhausting. Although a startup can lead to something wonderful, there is no doubt that they are stressful.

This is one reason why some workers do not join these types of companies. And obviously , there is nothing wrong if someone wants to just work at one place, do the job and leave at 5 pm. But these types of people are not the right people you might want in your office. You need those who have the right focus and do not take the job as a burden.

4) Dedication

A startup is not like a typical corporate company. The startup is not made by accident or sheer luck; rather they are built from hard dedication and times spend to build up the company and service to the customers.

For the company to succeed, you need a unique team of dedicated people. And, due to the nature of a startup, it needs people who are passionate. This means that your startup shouldn’t have employees who just sit around and gossip on how low your company’s success is when compared to some other competitors they see in the market.

5) Communication

You may have hired a team that is up to date and at the top of their field in what they do, but they simply cannot communicate with each other. There’s a reason why they say communication is key. The communication between your staff is important to get everyone on the right page, and to get the jobs done for your company.

A team is made up of people, but it always functions like one organ where each team member takes care of their own part and problems. And for this, the communication has to be good between the members. Learn to guide your staff to better communicate with each other, and be the foundation for sharing ideas among your team.

6) Adaptability

For a startup, it is important to have a team that can embrace the nature of adapt-or-die in the company, as this is what would make the business a success. Not everything may work out great as the company is just a startup. And you might have to deal with those workers who are less passionate and will leave the team soon.

But on the other hand, strong team members understand that the company is in the starting phrase, and would stay and adapt to give their best. Eventually, this team member would help the company become successful your venture.

7) Talent

A startup needs every member’s individual skills to bring it to a place where it is the best amongst the other great businesses. Don’t focus on the team member who is a master in just one thing, but can handle multiple things (like various talents), and you would find yourself reaching heights soon.

For example, instead of hiring a person who knows just graphic design and is not able to help you with web development or even with a little SEO, it is better to hire a person who is familiar with them or is willing to learn. Most of the knowledge will be on the job, so you want someone who is both talented and flexible in what they can do.

8) Metrics

As mentioned above, metrics are essential for a team since it shows that the startup is taking the means of developing a business seriously. To understand this better, a business metric is a measure that a company uses to monitor, track and assess the failure or success of multiple business procedures. This can be important numbers such as the total sales, costs, or number of customers.

The primary purpose of measuring the business metrics is for tracking the cost management. But the point of having them is to learn all about the progression of the company towards specific short-term and long-term objectives.

Other than this, it also shows the desire of the company for creating a product that the market wants. Numerous startups today invest in the development of products that do not have any demand in the market, and ultimately fail to deliver something that people want. With the metrics, the company would know what it is doing and how to reach the goals easily.

9) Founders

It all comes back to the founder in the end. The failure or success of a team depends on them since they are the ones that handle, manage and gather the team in the first place.

Other than the things mentioned here, there are many other hurdles that the founders have to take care of every day. Here are a few challenges that the founders may face:

• Every founder needs to make their startup a full-time job.
• They have to do everything to get the right people on the team (and when to let the bad ones go.)
• Technology “smarts” is not the benefit you might think it is. In short, not everyone in public wants something smart. Hence, the founder needs to make something that they can make and something that everyone would buy.
• Competition is not always a primary concern at the start, while making a place in the industry is.

In short, successful businesses have founders who are emotionally strong and are ready to take both good and bad positively and bring out the best in the company.

10) Prior experience

A team that has an experience of running a startup before would have a much better advantage over the other competitors. And the reason is that the startup world is hard to navigate and having prior experience does the trick to help you succeed faster without making many mistakes.

Other than that, the team should also have a good amount of industry-specific experience. The person who does not have the experience would hold the team back.

To learn more everyday for becoming a better entrepreneur, you can go through the Entrepreneur blog or even the Inc. blog.

Now that you have an idea of the type of team members you need to look for, you can gather the best troops for your startup and begin to soar in no time. Just ensure that you have all the desired type of people in the team so that you can avoid any undesirable situations where a team member leaves, and you’re scrambling to find help.

From the above, it’s clear that a startup cannot just hire any people or those who don’t have strong skills to get the job done. Your startup needs team members who can make the company successful rather than those who just collect their salaries at the end of the day. Choose your initial members smartly to help grow your startup into a huge success!

Author Bio:

[thrive_testimonial name=”” company=”” image=”https://dsim.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/sarthak-cp.jpg”]Sarath Cp is a Business Consultant at IncParadise – a Business Incorporation and Registered Agent service provider in the USA. You can connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.[/thrive_testimonial]