The 4 Start-Up Team Skill Sets
Going beyond the hipster, hacker, and hustler to build an all-star innovation team.
The hipster, hacker, hustler and… the hound?
The structure of ‘innovation’ teams varies across different organizations.
The traditional team structures are evolving to better innovate, e.g. management consulting teams integrating designers and researchers, and design consulting teams adding more rigorous strategists to the mix.
While both design and management consulting teams are adapting,
How can start-ups evolve?
How can they move beyond the struggling, haphazard band of misfits coming together to build the plane as they fly it, with inconsistent success? The key may be in recognizing the value of the researcher, or the 4th skill set in the crew, the hound.
While the hipster, hacker, and hustler represent traditional ‘roles’ within a start-up team (where the hipster is the designer, the hacker is the coder/developer, and a hustler is the business development person), start-ups can adapt a practice from design consulting by adding a hound to the mix. I am not suggesting teams go out and hire researchers, but treat each role as an ‘archetype’.
Each archetype represents a set of ‘skills’ a team should have depth in collectively
Each team member should hold a role associated with one or two of these archetypes in which they have the most expertise.
Why do you need a Hound?
A hound is centrally focused on discovering what the user really wants. They are observing and interviewing multiple users, discovering patterns, and identifying areas of opportunity for the team to innovate. They keep the core focus on the user so the team does not get married to a solution, but focuses on creating a solution that is actually solving a problem for the end user.
In design firms such as IDEO and Doblin, a person with a background in research is integrated into the team. At other digital agencies, a ‘UX’ (User Experience) or ‘CX’ (Customer Experience) person is in the field with the customer compiling research, creating the user experience, and defining ‘feature sets’ for a designer and developer to bring to life. Having a person focused on research allows these firms to stay committed to the user and not get married to specific solutions.
A common failure for entrepreneurs is they “live in a vacuum,” as Steve Tobak put it in his post on Entrepreneur. They become razor focused on their idea and vision, and lose sight of the need to quickly experiment with users to get feedback and validate their direction. Emphasizing primary research and compiling evidence (e.g. user quotes, usage statistics, or revenue generated — meaning customers ‘buy’ or ‘do not buy’ your product) directs the team towards what will work and away from what will not.
Usually the primary founder is a user and holds the user insights in their library of experience. When things are not going according to plan, they are able to consider their primary experience and identify new patterns to move forward. If you don’t have a former user with these insights on the team, having someone trained in research methods and being close to the user is even more important.
Why do you need a Hacker (Developer/Coder)? (Or why should you not outsource your development)
They are the manufacturers of digital assets, the digital makers. They are core for any team. Involving them early on and giving them experience in the field with real users who have felt the pain of the problem you are trying to solve, is valuable as it provides real context for them to build. Also it provides an opportunity for them to innovate directly for the end user since they are the ones with the greatest understanding of the technical capabilities. Keeping developers far from users, when your user experience is not well defined, increases the likelihood that the solution they create will not work, which wastes time and money.
Why do you need a Hipster?
Designers sculpt the new user experience. They are focused on solving the user problem and usually push beyond the bounds of what is technically feasible. They are the bridge between the insights that are discovered and the definition a working solution.
The good ones are trained to follow protocol and automatically incorporate human-centered design principles that are less obvious to the untrained eye. Example, when you look a webpage you find aesthetically pleasing and don’t really know the reason why, it can simply be because the same font type is used and all the objects on the page are aligned using grid lines. To them creating something more ‘human’ is automatic.
Why do you need a Hustler?
Cash is the blood of an organization and having a person focused on getting paying users, identifying and securing investors, and understanding the financial health of the business inside-and-out is key. For investors, having users is not enough, you need to know how you are going to make money and have revenue come in the door.
What hustlers do changes the most over a start-up’s life and is usually nebulous to developers and designers. They can do everything, from selling a product to a client, to creating a financial model in excel, to writing a business plan, to creating a presentation. All these skills vary greatly and are all expected of this role. It is common for designers and developers to ‘de-emphasize’ this role and assume that they can figure it out amongst themselves, but with the emphasis from investors on having revenue early, it can be the difference between being a cool ‘nights and weekends’ side project and a real business that pays the bills.
Building the capabilities of the hipster, hacker, hustler, and hound into your crew will make an all star start-up team. Sending different team members to workshops on the skill sets you don’t have depth in, such as going to a retreat on ‘business planning 101' or take an improv class together sharpen your sales skills, can improve overall performance. Developing the ‘4Hs’ can be the key to start-ups innovating faster and with greater success.
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Written by Sergio Marrero (feel free to connect!)
Edited by Jazmin Cabeza
