5 essential tips to create a powerful startup team

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They say you need three people to launch a startup:

• The Hustler aka the CEO/founder, the product visionary slash marketing and sales wiz.
• The Hacker aka the CTO, who’s going to code that product idea to life.
• The Hipster aka the designer who’s going to make that code look attractive for the end-users.

And that’s usually how a startup team with no money to spare looks like indeed. However, once you survive the initial tough years and close the first funding round (or even a few) or get the initial product traction and actual revenues, you will have to grow further.

And that means not just enhancing your product functionality or user base, but building a tech startup team to help you achieve your goals faster.

The “how to build your startup team” question never gets old for a few reasons:

• You still want to be frugal and hire only the best, most dedicated folks who genuinely care about your product rather than a bunch of corporates who just do their 9 to 5 and go home.
• Attracting top talent to a startup without a name (yet) and paying competitive salaries is challenging.

Now, before talking about the exact ways to build a great startup team, let’s focus on the reasons why people actually choose to work for a startup. This will help you pursue the right kind of candidates and hone your “come work for us!” pitch more precisely.

Why people work for startups

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No, this isn’t a new form of downshifting or a fad of the bored and well paid.

Sara Peary, now CEO of Dohr and managing director of RUHM Luxury Marketing, loved working for Pfizer, yet she chose to leave her lucrative and stable job in favor for a local marketing agency. Her key reasoning can be summed up to the following:

• Startups offer more room to make a tangible impact with everyday actions. Hence, the experience of working for one feels more rewarding compared to working within large corporations.
• Startups are more agile. Decisions are made faster, the approval process takes less time, and there’s more daily action than meetings for the sake of meetings.
• Startups have more room for experiments. “We have ideas and strategies that we think might change the market (we are pretty confident they will), but we also have the flexibility to watch the market and respond, reassess, and refocus.” – Sara Peary.

To find a team for startups, you need to look for candidates who are interested to be challenged on a daily basis, who are capable of functioning in a high-paced, organized chaos, and are equally productive when working solo or as a team.

Identify the positions you need filled

Prioritize the hiring process

Hiring vs. partnering

Full-time vs. contract work

Finding the best prospects