Our head of HR and chief people officer, Lucia Patoprstá recently travelled to New York City and San Francisco to give a few talks on how to find the right employees and grow your company. While this topic was — as it usually is — very much on her mind, and since she was meeting others in the field and percolating ideas, she got to thinking about the differences between the Prague startup scene and those in NYC and SF.
It’s the little differences
This is not really news to anyone. But let’s peep some specific differences. At an earlier-stage, the pitches of startups in the USA are very detailed, with mentors from various well-known universities behind them and years of research not just about competition, but also business plans. Because of the highly competitive environment, your idea has to be well thought through and honed to have a chance of attracting investors.
So, while you have to perfect your standing-out skills in this tougher environment, on the flipside there are more resources. There’s a climate of mentorship in Silicon Valley that comes from a history of building out successful startups, so there are many more possibilities to get mentored by those who have been through the ups and downs, and experienced scale-ups and acquisitions. Battle-scarred startup pioneers are often keen to impart some bit of wisdom.
At the same time, though, Lucia found there was still too much focus on success stories. Of course everyone wants to take their hats off to successes, but what she finds far more instructive and interesting are the stories of failed ventures and the hard-won lessons they yield, especially when it didn’t deter founders from pushing ahead to the next thing. She finds that Prague lacks this climate of casual mentorship, primarily because it’s not as large a sample size as the US. In Prague, there is a thriving crop of successful startup accelerators, but it might take a while before we have multiple generations of mentors to help startup founders discover what works and what doesn’t. Nevertheless, here at U+, we developed our own free Startup Guide, based on our knowledge base, to help anyone out there who wants to start their own company.
Don’t count me out
When it comes to hiring, inclusiveness is the topic of the day in American startups. Race, gender, age; America leads these concerns in general in terms of recruitment.
Having enjoyed the diversity of the two cities she recently visited, and having stood before the crashing waters on both edges of America, Lucia drew some connections and then saw some areas for improvement, glimpsing what might be a new wave.
Old is new
Certain ironies ultimately arose. Let’s take age, for example. Startup companies preach disruption, the near-revolutionary challenging of old industries with bold replacements. But startup companies, in Europe and the USA, have become strangely exclusive and one-note when it comes to age. Built mainly of talent in their 20s and 30s, startup companies have a tendency to edge out older employees whose experience and perspective might counterintuitively be something new or fresh at this point. Why should we ignore tech’s patron saint, Steve Jobs, who returned to Apple and began his most visionary work when he was over forty years old? While the playful fuel of youthful rebellion can be motivating, young disrupters and established corporations need not be at spiritual odds with one another. They can learn from each other. And if you’re no longer in your 30’s, don’t count yourself out from working with hot new technologies.
Culture fit vs. motivation fit
The whole notion of a culture fit has been a buzzword in the last few years of the American startup scene, but the tide is shifting. Culture fit has become too exclusive, too limiting, and you might be excluding people to your detriment. If the whole idea behind disruption is opening oneself to new ideas, then truly do so; bring in those with different perspectives.
Diversity in different dimensions is the real edge. If you hire people from different parts of the world, you get to know different markets. Living in a certain bubble may have been the right environment for you and your startup in the earlier, more fragile stages, but once again, the good ol’ Icarus Paradox rears its head: you need to change up your strategies if you want to stay in the game. Don’t merely look for people with similar tastes; that’s not going to inject any new lifeblood into your venture. Look for people with the right motivation. This means finding people who are interested in solving similar types of problems, so that beyond the pragmatic necessities of work, people can be happy and fulfilled long-term in a job. This will help you scale out your startup and have it take its ideal form. This type of fit is what Lucia looks for when interviewing.
Some helpful questions
While it’s simple enough to say one should find people of similar motivation, it’s another thing to actually sift for such characteristics. As practical suggestions, Lucia recommends asking
- What kind of problems are you interested in solving?
- What is the single most important factor that must be present in your work environment for you to be successfully and happily employed?
- What are some examples of times you felt energized by a problem or issue that you solved and when did you feel frustrated by something.
These fundamental questions will give you clues to who is sitting in front of you, what kind of goals they will strive for, and whether the relationship will be mutually beneficial for both of you.
