What are the characteristics of a good start up team?

by Sarthak Jain

It is relatively easy for a group of founders to stick together when things are going well. However the number one reason why startups fail is founders leaving, I would guess that 75% of the companies would probably fail for that reason (empirical guess). Having been a part of a startup team where 3/4 of the founders have stuck together for the last 3 years despite numerous pivots and hardships, here is my list of 10 things that make startup teams tick.

Qualities of a start-up team | Create infographics

1) Vision:

This is the most important criteria for what makes teams stick together through rough times. If the founders share a common vision, a particular way the world should be, this can be a powerful motivator for a team to stick together. If 4 people come together who believe that life on Mars would be better, that is a team that could face the odds and make it to success (to reaching mars, not building an electric car).

2) Aligned Motivations and Goals

Founders need to clearly articulate what motivates them and what their long term goals are. A major reason for founders quitting is once they realise building a startup is a lot more work than they had previously imagined. A lot of people assume that starting a startup is way to get rich quickly, once the rubber hits the road, a lot of bubbles are burst and a lot of tears and anger follow. If you have a founder in your team who is in it to make a quick buck, your probably better off replacing him or her or parting ways. It is very common for motivations to also change, maybe after a marriage and kids or a family crisis or any number of things. Handle such situations with care.

3) Diversity

Startup teams tend to work well when there is some kind of diversity in the team. Diversity might come in different flavours but it is important for founders to have slightly divergent ways of doing things. It leads to good healthy discussion and debate. A lot of the time founders come from very similar backgrounds with limited diversity, in this case it is important that the founders focus on skill development in very diverse areas.

4) Clear roles and responsibilities

Having clear roles and responsibilities is important so that founders don’t step on each others toes. When founders each are aware of what they are responsible for less avoidable and unproductive quarrels tend to happen. A good example of this is Sachin and Binny Bansal of Flipkart. Sachin looks at doing everything that needs to be done for the first time and Binny looks at everything that needs to be done repeatedly. This allows for the founders to always know who is in charge of what needs to be done. If a founder is a square peg in a round hole, she will most likely leave. She is not going to stick around if she feels she is no contributing enough. As the saying goes there are no bad employees (replace with founders), just bad fits.

5) Communication

Founders should have almost telepathic communication, if not on day 1, in the long term. Founders should be able to read each others mind and back each others play. It might happen in a board room or in setting goals for the team. If the founders are seen quarrelling and bickering constantly this sends out a poor message to everyone from the coffee boy to the investors. The best founders argue but never fight for long a time. A famous example is Marc Andressen and Ben Horowitz.

6) Enough glory to go around

Founders know how to share the glory where noone feels left out. There are enough accolades to go around when they are shared. The best teams are the ones who build things together. This also applies for handling criticism, good teams tend to take ownership of where they messed up rather quickly.

7) Ability to handle criticism

The best teams know how to have intellectually heated conversations without them becoming personal. Criticism of ideas are not criticism of people. The best founders learn to criticise and handle criticism in a healthy manner. The price of missing a deadline is always high, a barrage of questions about why we missed is treated as an opportunity to improve and not a court martial.

8) Clear leadership

In most cases there will be one founder who takes higher amount of ownership. The best decisions are made when someone knows that they are the the person who needs to handle it if the shit hits the roof. Founders must be equals in most respects. However having a concentration of leadership, not ownership has empirically proven to work. Thinks Jobs, Gates, Bezos and Page.

9 ) Past experience working together (?)

Past experience working together is just like saying, people who have already driven half way reach quicker. It is kind of obvious that people who have worked together before and now want to start a company have a higher chance of not hating each other.

10) Age(?)

In general companies have been built by founders who have been a similar age group, very few exceptions come to mind. However I think this has more to do with motivations and other factors. This is probably correlation and not causation.

The team is now building Cubeit, a mobile application which aggregates your content from multiple sources (chat, the cloud, email, and your phone) and makes it available at one place.