Build A Team Of S̶h̶a̶r̶e̶ Project-Holders #2
Successful startups are the result of a whole team. Not just of the CEO’s vision.
In my first answer to the question “What is the California DNA?”, I talked about the California mindset. Once you’ve imbibed a mindset, you then need to surround yourself with the right people to build a successful startup. This is what Christophe Cazes, an Inovexus mentor who spent 20+ years building international teams, has always prioritized.
During my meetings in San Francisco, I was surprised by the degree of dedication of some employees in startups. Several times, I had a 45-minute conversation with someone before realizing I wasn’t talking to one of the co-founders but to a Sales or Marketing Manager. They embodied the project as C-level usually do!
Maybe it was because the startup was revolutionary. Or because of natural enthusiasm.
But after 3 months of meetings with entrepreneurs and startuppers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, I would finally say that California founders have a unique capability in making teams 100% invested in their project.
You’ve probably read 130 articles talking about teams and the importance of taking care of employees.
👉 Here, I want to draw on my personal experience to focus on 3 main aspects of the California entrepreneurship I’ve observed that explain why people are so invested:
- The startup vision isn’t just a tagline but a project that employees buy into.
- Entrepreneurs capitalize on youth.
- They involve their employees in the company, in a financial sense.
1. A Team of Vision-Holders 🌍
Building a team with people who share and are convinced of your vision is the first step in getting them invested in your project.
I think being motivated and invested are 2 different things: motivation is short-term and can last 1 day. Being invested is for the long term. And since a startup is not a one-day project, it sounds good to make a team invested in it ;)
So it’s not about day-to-day actions but about a vision: how will this project change people’s daily lives? What real people problem is it solving?
In October, I met Sasha in Los Angeles: she’s the perfect example of that. She didn’t talk to me about her personal life, but about how SnappToon, an app for creating memes, will help democratize memes and thus NFTs for everyone, especially those who are unfamiliar with creative design and software. It wasn’t until the end of our conversation that I realized she wasn’t the CEO but the Marketing Manager. She presented me SnappToon as if it was her baby, something she had built! What’s certain is she believed 200% in the vision and it made so much sense to her.
👉 The vision is something EVERYONE can act on, not just the top-level managers. The application of such a vision in the work organization is based on people’s expertise: on their skills and what they like to do. Empowerment is a golden rule: employees have a specific mission they fully manage. They own and are responsible for their entire decision-making process.
From my experience here, there are a lot of people who aren’t only READY but WILLING to invest so much time and energy into Bay Area startups.
The consequence for CEOs:
It’s no longer about making them employees but Project-Holders!
Inspiring advice, isn’t it? 😉
And the good news is you won’t need to go to networking events anymore: your Project-Holders will pitch your startup better than you do!
The process of being invested is not limited to individuals on their own towards an exciting vision or mission. It’s also a dynamic internal process to achieve the ambitious vision! And what’s better than youth to do so?
2. Youth: A California Major Asset
Being in California changed my vision of youth, which I’ve always considered as being a disadvantage in the workplace.
My logic was:
Youth = inexperience = a burden for the company, a lack of credibility with managers.
An old mindset, for sure. But the one I believed in. 🤷♀️
A good practice I learned from California is looking at youth as an asset in the entrepreneurship and technology ecosystem. And young people are quite good at turning themselves into Project-Holders. For 3 reasons:
- They’re risk-lovers.
California entrepreneurs like Doug Erickson and investors like Jim Brandt profile young people as follows:
- They typically don’t have a family to consider in their decisions. They have no money to lose. They just have time. Because they’re still green and fresh, they’re easily emboldened with a vision to build an exciting world.
- These factors lead youth to be more creative: they see dreams before problems. They make decisions faster: they don’t think about it ten days before making a decision!
One of the first things our mentor Angelika Blendstrup told me was: “People don’t care about age”! She was right: what people care about is the Go-For-It attitude, remember? 😉
2. Growing up with social media is an unfair advantage over the previous generation.
- Stephane Giraudie, the founder of Walkie-Talkie, let 20yo people manage the whole Marketing Plan of his new startup. He knows they will be talented since they manage TikTok and technology trends like NFTs to target GenZ better than anyone else.
- In fact, I’ve often been told that young people are considered the BEST marketplace makers because they know how to leverage social media.
Nevertheless, young people need parental guidance at a strategic level. A common practice of startups in this regard is to implement programs to combine the experiences of older and younger people.
3. My last point about GenZ is… the Resignation Generation!
GenZ — a concept I didn’t know I was part of. Here, San Franciscans are really aware of its trends, movements, and impact on society.
We are called Resignation Generation because when we don’t like something, we won’t make any effort.
Jon Orozco, a Chief of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in several startups in LA confirmed it to me: since we’re no longer worried about stability or pensions and are asking questions that weren’t asked before, we easily quit if a company isn’t mission-driven or inclusive enough.
We’ll go freelance, work “fractionally”, create our own startup, or invest in NFTs, like Antonin Hartwood, founder of the Instagram account objectif_smartlife.
What does this have to do with being invested in a project?
Look at it the other way around: if we love it, if it’s meaningful to us, we can invest 100% in it. We won’t count hours. We will tell everyone about the wonderful vision and we’ll get over-informed about it! We’ll do part of the CEO’s job. Not out of obligation, not for money or their resume. For passion.
By being more creative, more passionate, and by moving faster, youth is in itself Project-Holder.
By the way, that’s something Inovexus’ founder, Philippe Roche, has well imported from California in France: he has built the entire operational team with young people. The result? 22 seed-startups accelerated in 2021 and €28M was raised!
3. S̶h̶a̶r̶e̶ Project-Holders!
Now it’s time to focus on the “Holder” part of my new expression 😜 My last California motto for getting your team invested — your employees become Project-Holders — is:
Equity is the new wage.
People working in California startups are neither shareholders nor employees.
When talking to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I was surprised by how many of them built their team by giving their employees stock options. 50 years ago, you would have had a fixed salary. Then, a bonus was added. Now, it’s both plus equity.
This has a strong meaning to me: successful startups are the result of a whole team, not the vision of the CEO.
For these entrepreneurs, the logic is the following:
- To build the best startup, you need the best talents, who are expensive.
- Early-stage startups don’t have money.
- Equity reconciles both.
If the startup grows, your share grows: pretty convincing to be a Project-Holder! And it goes along with my argument: since everyone is responsible for an entire mission, it seems logical that they have their share of the pie 😋
Based on my conversations here, stock options usually range between 0.05 and 1%. It makes sense when you know that 5% could be a problem to get further investments!
Next steps
Most of a CEO’s job is managing relationships. We think primarily of external relationships — with business partners, investors, customers — not those within the team.
I hope my focus on what’s going on inside the California startups has inspired you: building a team of Project-Holders based on a vision, on youth, and on a horizontal work organization is a win-win collaboration.
It’s really inspiring for me to meet so many people with a positive outlook on the future, with hundreds of ideas on how to make it better — even more from my youthful and green perspective!
After the mindset and the team in a startup’s strategy, my third observation on California entrepreneurship will be published in mid-January and will focus on momentum.
Meanwhile, you can follow my adventures on Linkedin! 😉
Mathilde
