How to recruit the ideal startup team

Rebeca Hwang
July 9, 2014
Rebeca@younoodle.com
Twitter: @rebecahwang
Building the Ideal Startup Team

Source: Startup of You
Startup members are different from employees

Personality traits of successful entrepreneurs

The importance of getting the team right
Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, Roelof Botha, Chad Hurley, Steve Che
Jawed Karim , Jeremy Stoppelman, Russel Simmons , Premal Shah
Space X
Tesla
Linkedin
Slide
Yelp
Digg
Flickr
Ning
YouTube
Facebook
Kiva

“mainstream”
entrepreneurs
Quality 1: Obsessive

Quality 3: Resourceful and Street Smart

Quality 4: With Integrity and Aligned Values

Quality 5: Visionary and Practical

 Attitude not skills
- Smarter than you
- Doers, not talkers
 Different + Complementary
 Airplane test
 Same values
What drives him/her?
(motivation and ambition)
Step 1: Find the Perfect Match

 Attitude, not Skills
Source:What I wish I knew when I was 20
Successful Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs:
• Don’t ask for permission
• Challenge pre-existing norms and rules: “A healthy disregard for the
impossible”, Larry Page
• Don’t expect a linear path
• Take bounded risks
• Accept failure
• “Resume of failures”, When to quit?
• Are very lucky: “The harder you work, the luckier you get”
• Value reputation and in building long term professional relationships

• Companies with more gender diversity deliver on average 30%
better results from IPOs. (Cornell University)
• Right ratio of “incumbents vs. newcomers” optimizes performance
(Broadway study)
• Companies with women on boards outperform those who don’t
(Vaccaro)
 Different + Complementary

Lesson 5: Create a cool company
culture
• Friendly competition is good
• (e.g. pull up contest, media loves it!)
• Reward excellence
• Promote a healthy lifestyle, unique
hobbies
• Fun perks
• Set the tone to be like a marathon,
not a sprint
• Help every member think about their
long term goals and help them get
there
Airplane test: create a cool culture

Exercise: Identify the 5 qualities that are most critical to earn YOUR trust
Empathy
Reliability
Competence
Chemistry/
Sense of Humor
Communication
Responsiveness
Grace under
pressure
Perspective/
Humility
Fairness
Vision
Entrepreneurship
Cooperation/
Commitment
Integrity
The Trust Spider was developed by Kosnik (1995). based on a literature review on qualities of
effective leaders. It has been used by hundreds of project teams
Same Values

Exercise: Compare your top 5 five qualities with those of someone
else in the course. How many do you have in common?
Empathy
Reliability
Competence
Chemistry/
Sense of Humor
Communication
Responsiveness
Grace under
pressure
Perspective/
Humility
Fairness
Vision
Entrepreneurship
Cooperation/
Commitment
Integrity
The Trust Spider was developed by Kosnik (1995). based on a literature review on qualities of
effective leaders. It has been used by hundreds of project teams
Same Values

Stakeholder assessment of your performance
Empathy
Reliability
Competence
Chemistry/
Sense of Humor
Communication
Responsiveness
Grace under
pressure
Entrepreneurship
Perspective/
Humility
Fairness
Vision
Integrity
Cooperation/
Commitment
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
= My Top 5 trust qualities
= My stakeholder’s Top 5 trust qualities
= My assessment of my performance
= My Stakeholder’s assessment of my performance.
X
X

Your self-assessment of your performance
Empathy
Reliability
Competence
Chemistry/
Sense of Humor
Communication
Responsiveness
Grace under
pressure
Entrepreneurship
Perspective/
Humility
Fairness
Vision
Integrity
Cooperation/
Commitment
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Compare notes. Where is the most critical “Trust Gap” in this example?
Empathy
Reliability
Competence
Chemistry/
Sense of Humor
Communication
Responsiveness
Grace under
pressure
Entrepreneurship
Perspective/
Humility
Fairness
Vision
Integrity
Cooperation/
Commitment
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Use Start-Stop-Keep to give each other feedback on specific things you
can do to close any Trust Gaps and to build greater trust
Start: Why?
Stop: Why?
Keep: Why?

Example: Start-Stop-Keep to close the Trust Gaps on communication
Start: Calling my cell and emailing
me to let me know if you will be late
for a meeting.
Why? I can warn other meeting
members so they do not waste
time. We can either start later – or
start on time and put you later on
the agenda.
Stop: Interrupting me when I am
speaking.
Why? It makes us less effective in
communicating, breaks my chain of
thought, and makes me appear to
others as weak and/or lacking in
executive presence.
Keep: Having our weekly project
status meetings.
Why? I want to know if project is on
schedule and whether there are any
obstacles your team is facing so we
can deal with them.

 Motivation: need for achievement vs. independence

 Complement team
skills with the right
advisors/investors with
the right track record
 Set up the right
compensation
structure: CEO salary,
fair equity distribution,
incentives for advisors
 Past interaction
(professional and
personal) matters
Step 2: It takes a village… build a network!
Source: Startup of You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dRKa700RaQ
Step 3: Resolve Conflict

Diagnose team problems early on

ISITEJ ISIFEJ INIFEJ INITEJ
Inspector Protector Counselor Mastermind
ISETIP ISEFIP INEFIP INETIP
Crafter Composer Healer Architect
ESETIP ESEFIP ENEFIP ENETIP
Promoter Performer Champion Inventor
ESITEJ ESIFEJ ENIFEJ ENITEJ
Supervisor Provider Teacher Fieldmarshal
[edit] Big Five
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
Exercise: Find your Myers Briggs Type

How to recruit the ideal startup team

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to How to recruit the ideal startup team

Similar to How to recruit the ideal startup team (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (9)

How to recruit the ideal startup team

Editor's Notes