I’ve built teams as an insider/outsider, small and large companies, prior and current era. This presentation is a fresh look at building your startup team. Building your startup team is different from team building in a large organization. Hint, it’s not about titles, roles and experience.

1. Building your
Startup Team
Novel Approaches for an Agile World
Jeffrey Beir
@jbeir, jeffrey@seed2a.com

5. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Topics for Today
 Start-ups are different than teams in big companies
 The world is different today – opportunity for
innovative team building
 What are the unique requirements of my business?
 How do I build my start-up team?
 A couple of case studies

7. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
But I have seen this one…
Chairman CEO
CFO CTO
VP Marketing
& Sales
CSO

10. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
The World is Different
People
Geography
Markets
Technology
Biz Models
Financing
Pace

11. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Traditional Company Building
Market/Fo
cus
Mission
Core
Values
10 yr
vision
3 yr Goals
Strategic
initiatives
Culture &
Communications
Plans and
Accountability

13. DeferDecisions
Deliver Fast
AGILE Mindset
Iterate
Learn
EliminateWaste

14. Agile Mindset:
Vision to Viability
Vision
Focus
Risks
Flexibility
Sequence
Value

15. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
So how does this all translate to building your team?
 Attract awesome talent with complementary skills who share
the excitement for the company vision
 Focus and align the team on key initiatives for growth
 Create a learning organization that crisply makes adjustments
to the plan to adjust for risk
 Build a cohesive team that celebrates the collective win over
individual gain, and learns from failure
 Embrace the difficult decisions to address mistakes and
changes needed for growth
 Foster a culture that embraces flexibility and thrives in good
times and bad
 Allow for Gen Y (and Z) to tap the energy and fresh thinking

16. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Attract awesome talent
 Build a company people want to work for, or better yet
want to brag to their friends about
 Hire for aptitude over experience
 Look for passion
 Diversity creates better decisions - need realists and
optimists, creatives and analytics, …
 Polish your hiring process, look for culture “fit”
 Always be recruiting
 It’s everyone’s job
Hire for great DNA over domain
experience.
Don Bulens
CEO Unidesk
Former CEO, EqualLogic
Avoid the Press Release Hire. If you
hire who has a long pedigree that you
are so proud of – and you do a press
release, you've probably hired the
wrong person
Brian Halligan
CEO
HubSpot
Why is hiring so important? Think back to
teams you have run in the past. Think about
the best person you ever managed... Think
about the worst person you ever managed...
Want more of the former, and less (or none)
of the latter?
Paul English
Founder and CTO
Kayak
Recruiting all the time. Even when we had no
openings, I was always recruiting.
Diane Hessan
CEO
Commnuspace
No passion? No job. Entrepreneurship is a
quest. Founders are passionate - the team
must embrace and share the passion.
Don Bulens
CEO Unidesk
Former CEO, EqualLogic

17. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Focus and align the team
 Gain alignment around proof points for the business
and financing
 Define the “MVP” for your company, your MVC
 Insure clarity around today’s problems, and those that
can wait for another day
 Embrace a distributed team
 Reward getting sh-t done, over face-time
The way people live and work has
radically changed, so the way you
manage them needs to radically
change. "The office" is an idea, not a
place.
Brian Halligan
CEO
HubSpot

18. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Create a learning organization
 Commit, but verify (again and again)
 Track metrics and communicate them
 Don’t automate/scale until it’s proven
 Maintain humility and do “post-mortems”
 A small change today is better than a big change
tomorrow
Build just enough up front - be smart
about scaling - and look for triggers
so you know when to build out.
Melissa Leffler
VP Engineering
Objective Logistics
Adjust your process to fit your
team, deployment, market
stage, customers activity.
Melissa Leffler
VP Engineering
Objective Logistics

19. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Build a cohesive team
 Celebrate the collective win over individual gain
 Confidentiality, trust works both ways
 Learn from failure
 Share the bad news, as well as the good news
Complete openness! I shared all of our numbers --
good and bad -- even when we barely had any
money left. I found that it relaxed people to know
the truth, and it motivated them to help me. So, I
felt less alone, and it helped to create a motivated
team.
Diane Hessan
CEO
Commnuspace
Have rituals. When things are
ridiculously crazy, it is nice to be able
to say, "and of course, it's Throwback
Thursday again."
Diane Hessan
CEO
Commnuspace
Trust is the foundation of any high
performance team, and that without trust, no
collection of great individuals can become a
truly great team.
Trust is borne of truly knowing the members
of your team, and in them knowing each
other.
Tod Loofborrow
Founder and Former CEO
Peoplefluent

20. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Embrace the difficult decisions
 We all make mistakes
 Sometimes the growth exceeds the individual
 Often the worse kept secret
 While difficult, better for the common good
 I firmly believe it can be respectful of the individual
Fire fast - we all make hiring mistakes, or
have key people who don’t scale well, and
try to compensate for their deficiencies.
Poor performers and/or poor attitudes
are poison – they drag down everyone.
Don Bulens
CEO Unidesk
Former CEO, EqualLogic
Holding on to non-performers for
too long. It lowers the standards
for everyone in the company.
Diane Hessan
CEO
Commnuspace
I took the management team through a "bond in the
woods" ropes course to build trust and teamwork. We
climbed ladders in the mud and rain and did rope
climbing which requires teamwork and trust. Drinking
beers afterwards was a moment of bonding through
our pain, but when we got back to the office the next
day - the toxic VP was still toxic, the silos were still
silos, and we had accomplished nothing.
Tod Loofborrow
Founder and Former CEO
Peoplefluent

21. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Foster a culture that embraces flexibility
 Defer decisions that can be deferred
 Architect for uncertainty
 Reward “taking the ball” and moving it forward
 Focus on what you must do well, and outsource the
rest
 Execute fast (take smaller bites)
 Create a parking lot
Outsource with care - build critical
mass first, and flexibility/agility is
king in the early days.
Melissa Leffler
VP Engineering
Objective Logistics
Make every hire count in the
beginning ... and feel pain before
adding.
Melissa Leffler
VP Engineering
Objective Logistics
In the beginning, you need utility players:
people who will see a customer and then fix
a problem, and then make coffee and then
help with internal training, and then get the
mail. Later on, you need specialists.
Diane Hessan
CEO
Commnuspace

22. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Allow for Gen Y (and Z)
 Create a relaxed work environment
 Make the executive team accessible to employees
 Set up processes, but be flexible
Embrace Gen Y, don't fight them. If you
make Gen Y's work in a Gen X culture,
they won't be happy. If you build a Gen Y
culture, they'll be hyper-productive. We
need to get over ourselves and conform
to them, not the other way around.
Brian Halligan
CEO
HubSpot

23. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
So, how do I build my start-up team?
… taking into account your unique requirements around:
 People – age, domain experience, skills
 Geography – virtual, economics, timezone
 Markets – international, US first, local, hyper-local
 Technology – infrastructure, tools, manufacturing
 Business model – distribution, revenue, sales, marketing
 Financing – capital efficiency, sources, milestones

24. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Building your founding team
 Shared enthusiasm for the vision
 Complementary skills/preferences,
strengths/weaknesses
 Aligned growth objectives
 Trust them with your children
 Disagree respectfully
 In it, in good times and bad
 Willing to step aside if needed

25. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Dividing the Founder Pie
Contribution Weighting Founder 1
CEO
Founder 2
CTO
Founder 3
CFO
The idea 3 50 50
Technical Approach 2 100
Prototype 1 100
Business Plan 1 40 30 30
Recruited
team/advisors
1 50 50
Commitment 2 70 20 10
Users/Customers 1 100
Seed
capital/customer
funding
1 75 25
Role going forward 2 50 30 20
Founder Ownership 655
47%
580
41%
165
12%

26. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
A few case studies
HuePick - Sarah Gondela
LifeGuides.me – Phil Strazzulla
Six Foods – Rose Wang

27. © Copyright 2014 seed2A, LLC
Special Thanks To
 Don Bulens, CEO Unidesk
 Katherine Catlin and Bouzha Cookman, Catlin and
Cookman Group
 Paul English, Founder and CTO Kayak
 Abby Fichtner, iLab
 Brian Halligan, CEO HubSpot
 Diane Hessan, CEO Commnuspace
 Tod Loofborrow, Founder and Former CEO Peoplefluent

28. © Copyright 2013 seed2A, LLC
Questions?
Jeffrey Beir
@jbeir
linkedin.com/in/jbeir
jeffrey@seed2a.com