As a Founder, How do you Build your Startup Team?

We have been very strategic in assembling our startup team and it all starts with your cofounder. I have written an answer to previous question about what I was looking for in a cofounder, but in short I wanted someone that had complimentary set of skills and strengths but the same level of commitment that I did to the vision and our partnership. These two factors carry over to the rest of the team as well.

Additionally, we knew there were a few key functional roles (positions) that we would need to support clients and future clients through their entire lifecycle using our product, which included:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer Success
• Product (engineering)

We spent some dedicated time thinking not just about what we needed in these roles at that early stage but also about how the roles would evolve. We needed to define the competencies and skills for day 1, but also for day 360 and year 3.

Understanding how the role was likely to evolve allowed us to not only find someone for today, but someone that was most likely able to evolve as the demands of the business dictated new approaches. We were also able to communicate this to candidates and get their commitment that it was something that would still interest them as the role evolved.

This also highlighted the cultural values that we needed from our employees. Curious people that had a growth mindset and were persistent at pushing through obstacles were a few of the factors that emerged for all the roles. I elaborate a little more on our approach to defining this in another answer I provided here.

To see the original question and answers on Quora click here.

What factors are most likely to change when a company grows very rapidly?

One of the biggest changes that happens with companies that grow rapidly is a sense of loss of control of the company culture. This happens because of a few key areas:

1. New people are added to the team frequently. For those employees that were there in the early days they feel a sense of loss of control. They may ask themselves questions about these new employees such as ‘what is their role?’ These people also don’t typically have the history and the context on why some things are the way they are at the company, which is why onboarding new employees effectively and accumulating organizational knowledge in a way that tells a story for new employees is increasingly important.
2. New strategies aren’t as widely known. In the early days any shift in strategy or new process / approach is often widely known because it is a small team that can be involved in that process. However, as the team grows larger and you add layers of management early hires lose proximity to decision making and an understanding of new strategies.
3. New locations or remote workers. As the company grows larger geographic proximity can start to become a barrier. New locations or remote workers mean there are more people who may not be connected to day to day decision making or have opportunities to build relationships with each other. This can cause the levels of camaraderie or trust to erode.
4. More process and control. Bigger organizations also need more process and control to make sure that information moves up and down and throughout the organization and that decisions are aligned with organizational strategy. Also, as organizations get larger there is more to lose and risk management becomes more important. This can cause less autonomy and more people that need to be involved with decision making.

These are just a few of the ways that fast growing companies can change, and not always for the better in the eyes of employees that feel a sense of loss for the changing culture.

See the original question & answer on Quora