Startup logs: Teams, Family & Friends

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Gist: I am not suggesting that family and friends will help you build great products / startups. It’s a rare case. I bet they do not even try your product. Less than 5% of your friends may click the link you sent to try the product. The conversion rate from your friends circle is less than conversion rate from your marketing efforts.

Don’t build a product assuming your friends are going to be your first users. Getting them to do alpha/beta testing is almost next to impossible.

Anyway, this article is not about whether your friends and family will help you are not. It is about having a good circle of friends with diversified skillset. Your guess is correct. Here we are talking about building great teams to achieve the vision.

Teams

To build any startup, one needs a great team with suitable skillset or good enough money to outsource/invest on different activities to be done. One might think, we need to invest small amount to start any business. But the very statement is not true for the following reasons

1. The team is important not just because of their skillset but the impact trust
2. You need money for tech and business operations without which either you definitely fail/close or lose the company/product after all hard work

Building teams

1. If you are still in college, start building a good circle of friends. No need to be someone to whom you can share your personal problems but at least to the extent where you can comfortably reach out to them for help or trust them with your business
2. Don’t be shy. Being introvert is not being shy. I have been both and it is not ok
3. Don’t make someone part of your team just because he is your friend but make sure he contributes to take ahead the company one step at a time
4. Remote teams sucks. As a startup, your team needs to sit together unless you guys are highly motivated and nothing else to do other than startup. Even no need to earn for your family
5. Choose someone who teased you, your entire life. You need someone who speaks up and points out your mistakes not some one who consoles. The consoling team member takes the team one step backward every time a mistake happens
6. If you are 100% on startup, look for someone who is also 100% but not working. It keeps up your motivation.
7. If you are late in life with 9 to 5 job, look for someone who is ready to share his earnings with you if you leave the job and concentrate on startup for 100%. It might not be the case, but intentions matter

We can write a book on building team for startups but as you know it is just a log.