6 Strategies For Building A Winning Startup Team

1. Whom do you seek?

It is best to identify the potential traits that you would like to see in your team. Detailing out a profile for each prospective hire will give you a baseline of the right skills and abilities. When you know your non negotiable, it becomes easier to find your culture fit employee to build a strong team. These guidelines need not be hard and fast, once you start the hiring process you might learn that some points you listed are not actually what you need at the moment. 

2. What kind of attitude do you want to garner in your team?

While micromanaging might work in a corporate set up, the start-up is an environment where a lot of things are fluid. Can your potential candidate work in autonomy and not need supervision.

While it is not uncommon to find the word self starter on a lot on resume’s one way to find out is to invite the candidate into solving a real day problem at your start up and notice how they interact with the team and what kind of solutions they come up. Signing a non disclosure in such situations is a good practise.

3. How will you align visions?

Everyone on your team needs to be on the same page. If everyone is doing their own thing, there won’t be any progress hence alignment of vision is essential to your growth. A team with a collaborative approach has more chances to survive the hard times than a scattered team that has only personal agendas.

4.How will you promote teamwork?

There is never a ‘me’ in a team. While team building exercises are a go to option, it is important to not force them on the team. A better option is to create opportunities to get the team to volunteer together. This not only brings out the best in the individuals but also allows for natural interactions within the team.

5. Create an atmosphere of contribution 

It is important to create a culture where each individual is intrinsically motivated to meet defined goals and where their contribution is valued.

6. Bad apples

While handing out pink slips might be difficult, it is essential to be willing to take that call. A research conducted on 101 start-ups by CB Insights shows that 23% of the start-ups failed because the team was not right. Hence it is better to get rid of the bad apple before the entire culture is affected.

Don’t be in a hurry; building a formidable team takes time. Acknowledging the weakness and strengths in your team takes and improvising different skill that are compatible to your culture fit will need patience. Use your network and always be on the lookout, you just might fetch your next team member!