Perfect startup team for each stage of your startup
Inorder to understand the term “Perfect” startup team, we have to understand the stage that a startup is currently under, inorder to define Perfectness because a team that pulled off a successful product-market fit may not necessarily be good enough to pull off a successful execution. So, it’s really critical that we understand the startup stages and build appropriate teams. Below are just my opinions as per my knowledge and yours may differ. So, hang in tight!
There are only five stages as below, that each startup is experiencing at any given point in time. I’m borrowing the stages directly from Alistair Croll from Lean Analytics.
Empathy
Perfect team: Deep empathizer — One who can empathize with people (Potential customers) and to deeply understand their problems.
This is based on the fact that at the first stage of your startup, you just need to understand what’s the problem that you’re trying to solve and to whom that problem exists.
And inorder to understand the target market, you just need one or two people working, who can get out of the building and talk to as many people as possible inorder to get into their heads to understand their problems and to empathize with them. Trust me, this is a skill.
Stickiness
Perfect team: A computer geek and a sales animal- One who can make it and one who can sell it (Rest is all sh*t at this stage).
This stage revolves around the fact that you should build a product that your users can stick around with.
If you have completed the previous stage successfully, then obviously you’d be able to build a compelling product/service that your users want to stick around with. Now that, once you believe that you’ve proved your concept with an MVP (Minimum viable product), you’d be focusing on building the actual product adding one feature at a time, based on the feedback received from your customer.
This is the stage that you can prove your product-market fit. Inorder to achieve this, your team should have a guy one who can code stuff and one who can sell that stuff (Eventhough at the start, the coder would be shipping a crappy product). These two core competencies can bring the company around to the next level.
Virality
Perfect team: Data analyst (Growth hacker), Operations team and potentially few investors.
Now that you have a successful product with less churn rate, this is the stage where you should be focusing on viral growth through different channels and creative growth hacking stratagies. Since a startup doesn’t have enough resources inorder to do hefty marketing, the rational way to go for is growth hacking (Ofcourse right?). Well, growth hacking is not that wacky magic sh*t that one does to gain traffic. Sorry, it’s not! It’s a painstaking work of a Data analyst to look at thousands of numbers in a spreadsheet and pick one specific variable among thousands of numbers where he could tweak to blow that company around (More about this topic in Lean analytics book). In one word, it’s Science.
Eventhough most growth hacking strategies can be executed at minimal cost, few cases like as in DropBox where they offered free storage space for referrals, you need money to have those kind of party.
While the company is going viral it’s really necessary that the core operations is going smoothly. Most companies, while growing, they tend to move far away from their product-market fit and the quality of value that they’re offering to customers. This should be taken care by the Ops team.
Revenue
Perfect team: Business developer, Ops team (Including the Data analyst), an advisor and few investors.
This is the point where your idea turns into a business technically by transforming into a frigg’n money making machine. If you’ve survived until this stage, then you don’t want to miss out the party here. Now, you’ve got everything setup except the pricing model for your products/services. Things can go out of hand easily here since until now, your customers were flocking around with ease without paying money. They’ve had nothing to lose. Now, they’ve got to pay their hard earned money out of their pocket to you. Inorder to avoid losing much of your exisiting customers and acquire new customers you need a Business developer who’s job profile is just as the name exactly says. He should be able to generate revenue from exisiting cutomers and look out for new markets to acquire.
It’d be better if the Business developer is from the same background as of your startup so he knows how the industry works and what’s the appropriate price for your product/service. Else, you should be hiring an Advisor who maybe your Dad, Uncle, Aunt or anyone but he/she should be from the same background that your industry operates. Else, you got to test your product/service with different pricing model which on the way might lead to loss of few precious customers.
While your beloved BD is tuning the company into a fine tuned money machine, the core value prop shouldn’t be compromised which is why Ops team is necessary for steamlined daily operations from the third stage of your startup.
Scale
Perfect team: Visionary, Sales & Marketing lead, Tech lead, Operations lead. These guys form the founding team and appropriate CxOs. This varies for each company and the industry that you operate in.
This is the final stage of your startup where you can say with a grin that you’re going global. If you’re having big plans and thinking long term, then ideal case would be to reinvest every dime back into your company where the company technically gets converted into a loop that you generate revenue and reinvest back again.
Making money and reinvesting them leads to nowhere unless the company has a clear direction backed by a Visionary. The primary job of this guy is to look out for factors that can sink the ship and hunt them down, ensure that the ship is moving towards it’s desired direction and once it reaches it’s desired destination, then looking out for new and hard destinations for the company to march forward. He/She who thinks long term and who has a clear vision for the company makes an inspiring Visionary.
Without a revenue which is being backed by Sales and marketing team, even a visionary can’t turn the company around. Sales and marketing team backed by Sales Lead is critical for a startup to thrive since he/she’s the one who works to pay for the whole party. Primary job of a Sales lead is to ensure that the generated demand for the company can be met by their sales execution startegies, sales numbers are increasing, gross profit margins are increasing and who can spearhead with competitors for acquiring their existing customers. He/She who’s relentless, who can control the money making machine and one who’s aggressive in his/her decisions makes a raging Sales animal.
Without a good product/service, no dime can be generated by the company. Customers hate the value offering and the company can gradually turn into a viscious failure cycle. A good quality product/service demands an excellent product management and tech team. Primary job of a Tech lead is to make the product/service ready for scaling, building robust platforms that wouldn’t crack under high traffic conditions and reducing day to day glitches in the software. He/She who’s running Lean or Agile, optimizing the product consistently for efficiency, looks out for new tech the company could adopt and he who’s cool can make a geeky Tech Lead.
As I mentioned earlier, Ops team backed by an Ops lead is critical inorder to overlook daily operations. If a company doesn’t focus on the current i.e., day to day operations, the future plans for the company are at risk. The job of an Ops lead is clear and simple i.e., to steamline daily operations and to ensure that product-market fit is not compromised.
Which team do you think that is perfect to take on any challenge? PayPal Mafia? Maybe. Let me know in the comments.
