MEMSI June 2018: Building a Winning Team - Part 1
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This document discusses building a winning startup team and provides examples of founding team compositions. It outlines two common ways to start a startup - with either a Hacker and Hustler or with members having diverse backgrounds. Example teams shown include combinations such as a Hacker, Hustler, and Hipster, or those with members from business, design, and technical disciplines. The document encourages identifying preferred roles, skills, and interests to find the right team fit and chemistry.
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MEMSI June 2018: Building a Winning Team - Part 1
- 1. MIT Entrepreneurship and Maker Skills Integrator Building a winning team – Part 1 May 2018
- 2. Two ways to start a startup 2
- 3. Two ways to start a startup 3
- 4. Two ways to start a startup 4
- 5. Two ways to start a startup 5
- 6. 6
- 7. 7
- 10. Example founding teams HackerHustler Hustler Hacker MBAMBA Hustler Hipster Hacker MBA Design MBA Urban planning Computational Biology Ph.D.
- 11. Example founding teams 11 HackerHustler Hustler Hacker MBAMBA Hustler Hipster Hacker MBA Design MBA Urban planning Computational Biology Ph.D. CEO CEO CEO
- 12. Roles != Majors != Skills
- 13. What’s your preferred role? What skills do you bring to the table? 13
- 14. SHARING! 14
- 15. Sneak preview: Team formation considerations 15 Your preferred role Your skill set Your area of interest ?? Team chemistry ??
- 16. Questions? 16
Editor's Notes
- What do you think are the 2 ways to start a startup?
- Either idea first…
- … or team first.
- Here are some real startups that started in different ways. Lightmatter was cofounded by Thomas Graham, a MEMSI Jan 2017 alumni. This is a startup that is making an optic chip for accelerating AI algorithms. It is massively faster and takes less energy than using a GPU to run AI / ML algorithms. The tech cofounders worked on it for years before they formed a team with Thomas, won the MIT 100k last year, and raised $11m this year. This was def. an idea first startup. Hubspot is the exact opposite. The cofounders Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan met at Sloan while taking project based classes on eship. They knew they wanted to do something together, in marketing, but not sure what. So they started a company and gave it a generic name that can mean anything. They started experimenting and ended up building a one-stop-shop marketing platform that went public in 2014, and has a market cap of $4.4b.
- Do we have a position on this? Hell yeah. A lot of times, in many startups, the most overrated thing in a startup is the idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can have ideas. BUT the team is what will make it work. Tech based startups like Lightmatter are a little different – but it still comes down to the team making things work. Lightmatter has raised $11m and are on an arms race to get a first working chip prototyped. The only way they can get it done is if the team is cohesive, has complementary skills and works well together like a well oiled machine. The #1 reason startups fail is a bad team. So we want to take a few minutes to talk about what makes a great team.
- You’ve filled out the applications and we have asked you to pick one of these three roles that you like to play. Show of hands. How many people feel they are a hustler? Hipster? Hacker? How many people feel they fit in more than 1 box? That is perfectly normal, I myself have played all 3 roles. What I find though is that I like 1 over another, and I therefore choose to play that role if the team allows me to. That’s something for you to think about as well. What role do you like to play? Hold that thought. Let’s meet some real winning teams and see who they are and what they are about.
- Hubspot - $4.4b – unicorn Waypoint – delta v team 2018 – sold to PTC less than 1 year after company formation Biobot Analytics – delta v alum, YC alum, raised $2.5m and Mariana here has not even graduated.
- Let’s look at what roles they are playing in their companies.
- Now lets look at their majors. Wow! What’s with the discrepancies!
- Now lets look at their majors. Wow! What’s with the discrepancies!
- The moral of this story? You need to know that people’s majors don’t necessarily equal the role they play. Likewise their majors also don’t represent all the skills they bring to the table.
- Let’s do an exercise. We want you to take 2 minutes, take a piece of paper, and put down your name, you preferred role (use a sticker we provide), and write down some of the skills you can bring to the table. All done? Now share it with your table.
- Let’s go once around and see how we do in each table. Does every table have a hacker, hustler, hipster? Does every table have someone who can do something mechanical? Electrical? Coding? Business? Now hypothetically, if this is the teams you ended up working with all of these 2 weeks. What issues might you run into? (look for tables with too many of 1 kind of person)
- That was a super quick exercise to get you thinking about what you want to do and what you bring to the table. There is are two more dimensions. The third dimension is this: Which is your area of interest. Healthcare? Gaming? Wearable devices? Sustainability? That’s the last thing you should consider when forming a team and the first guiding principle for the team. Because ultimately your team will work on 1 project, and we want you to find folks who are interested in the same few things you are interested in – and help you form teams that are reasonably diverse in preferred role and skill sets as well. The fourth dimension is of course, team chemistry. Do you get along with your team? Can you figure out how to work with them? Do the personalities mesh with good chemistry? This, of course, you won’t know until you get a bit deeper into the project. This is why we will have two time slots where you will be taking 1x1 meetings with TAs to discuss how things go. The rest of the day will include many more team building and networking activities to help you get to know each other a little more. At this point let’s take a break and answer any q’s – then we will move on to the next activity.
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