After the Funding: Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done
Written on April 9, 2008 – 3:37 pm
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Another Wednesday, another post in the series “After the Funding“. While previous posts have looked at strategy, sales, roadmap and releases, I will today look at people. At the end of the day it’s people that make or break startups. And you need to have the right team on board to succesfully unlock growth.
Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done
The early team is built up of founders and a close circle of trusted employees that have often worked together previously and that become close friends. The team has natural chemistry and complementing skills. You need few management skills and early employees wear many hats, filling in as office manager or accountant when needed.
To expand the business, the team needs to be expanded. Expansion means bringing in seniority as well as volume. The team of founders and early employees needs to determine which management roles can be assumed by the current team and which need to be brought in from the outside. And the founders need to create a recruitment process that consistently lands the startup additional talent.
The founders must realize that it is time to bring in the professionals when they are spending more time learning than leading and the staff starts losing confidence. At the same time, they must avoid bringing in too much senior staff with high salaries and low hunger for success. As for expanding the team, the key lies in hiring people that are smart and that get things done. Read and apply Joel Spolky’s “Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing” and never hire someone if there are any doubts or you are having a hard time make a “hire or no hire” decision.
After the Funding
In the first post of the series I explained that decision-making needs to be based on long-term strategy. Owners need to spend time defining a clear and concise strategy and enable others to make day-to-day decisions based on their roles in the company.
Then I cautioned about the risks of premature expansion of the sales force. Owners must set-up a repeatable sales process first and then expand the sales force.
Then followed a post about the importance of a product roadmap to create alignment between teams, to help business define its target market and to guide technology in setting priorities and allocating resources.
And last week I made the case for your product heartbeat – a continual rapid-fire release plan that provides customers with new features at short, predictable intervals and gives focus to the development team.
Interesting Reads
Here are some interesting articles and posts on hiring:
- Next to his guerilla guide to interviewing, Joel has pubslished many interesting articles on hiring and other topics related to software development. The entire archive is worth reading!
- Another great blog is onstartups that I have referenced before. You might be interested why “your startup should not hire Seth Godin” or “how to tell schmucks from superstars in five minutes“
- The business of software blog has an amusing anecdote about the issues around hiring managers“.
After the Funding Checklist After the Funding: Establish a Product Heartbeat – a Continual Rapid-Fire Release Plan Modu: phone morphing might burn millions of Dov Moran’s dollars Smart Israeli companies promote their start-up culture After the Funding: Base Decision-Making on Long-Term Strategy instead of Short-Term Constraints
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
2 Responses to “After the Funding: Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done”
By Drivingsouth on Apr 9, 2008 | Reply
I don’t see anything in this article that differs “before the funding” to “after the funding” companies.
Funded companies will only find harder to embed organizational learning with new employees since they’ll have less time to do it
By Mark Schiefelbein on Apr 10, 2008 | Reply
In the post I was trying to get at two changes: Funded companies will hire (1) more people and (2) more senior staff.
Before funding, a lot less hiring happens. This is partly due to limited funds. But also ok as you are still developing the concept. After the funding there is money. And you will also want to accelerate and quickly turn the concept into a business.
And the execution required to turn the concept into business in my opinion requires a certain amount of experience that is less relevant in the early stage.