By Steve Hawk Even in the biggest, most stable corporations, putting together a small team can be a perilous process fraught with personality clashes, hierarchical imbalances, and conflicting visions.
But in a startup, the challenge of assembling a solid team — and then keeping its members inspired and focused — carries the added stress of being potentially fatal. When a company consists of a half-dozen people, a single recruiting misstep can topple the house. Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Lindred Greer has been studying and teaching the art of team-building for 12 years, with an ever-increasing focus on startups. In Greer’s course The Psychology of Startup Teams, students spend time outside of class analyzing the interpersonal dynamics at a nascent business, report their findings to the class and visiting experts, and then return to the startup to offer advice. Much of this course-related fieldwork has made its way into Greer’s scholastic studies and even directed her future research. “It’s a nice feedback loop, because there isn’t a lot of good research on the people side of startups,” she says. “There’s a lot on product and strategy and structure and funding, but not a lot looking into the social interactions.” She recently sat down with Insights to share what she’s learned about how startup founders can assemble strong, motivated teams. What are the key differences between creating a team for a startup versus creating a team for an ongoing business?First, there’s the intensity of interaction. If you’re on a project team at a big existing company like, say, Google, you’re not really married to the people on your team. But if you’re starting a business and choosing co-founders and making your first hires, you’re looking at one of the most intense relationships you’re going to have in your life. It’s similar to marriage. At Google, there’d be more room for error, because the team is more likely to be a small cog in a huge machine.Yes. But with a startup, it’s more of a life-or-death situation. Issues around power and fairness are bigger, because your entire life is probably vested in the business. You might be living hand-to-mouth while waiting to get funded. With so much at stake, little obstacles are harder to navigate. It’s essentially a hiring challenge?It’s hiring decisions, and it’s having a clear culture and clear statement of values even before you go looking for a co-founder. And then when you start the first phase of hiring, it’s making sure that you and your founding team have an aligned vision, so it’s clear who’s going to be a cultural fit. One of the things that can really break an early-stage team is bringing in the wrong person and then not having any idea how to fire them. That can be a train wreck, especially if there’s equity involved. You might not even have an HR team in place.You usually don’t, so you’re doing it on your own. And that’s rough because most people aren’t trained in this. Would you go so far as to actually sketch out a dream team and then go find them?Definitely. You don’t want to just be grateful for the first decent coder you find. You want to be intentional about it. That’s the main takeaway from my course: Be as intentional about your people as you are about your product. Does that mean looking beyond personality and experience?It means looking at everything. Make a list of your own competencies. What are you great at? What are the skill sets you need to have in other people? And, just as important, what common values are you looking for? Can you define values in this context?Things that you hold dear to your heart. Things that you’re not willing to compromise on if you get into a conflict over them. So that’s a squishy, ethereal thing?Not necessarily. The best value systems for startups are directly tied to the product. One startup that I know, they have a 3-D printing company, and their value system is, “We love to build things, and we love sharing what we build.” So there’s a passion for building things, but also some gregariousness and intellectual playfulness. You should also ask, “Am I in it just for myself, to make a million bucks, or am I in it to make the world a better place?” That’s a fairly big, basic value decision. That would seem to be one core value where you’d definitely want people aligned.You need to find people who are excited by the company’s mission statement. Like Disney makes families happy. Adidas is competitive. Would you consider that a primary filter?I would apply an ability filter first and then choose between my top five candidates based on who is the closest fit in terms of values. It’s easier to siphon out people based on ability — you can do that with their resumes. And then once you have them in for interviews, that’s when you start thinking about values and culture. Is this person going to be happy here? Are they going to fit in with you? So maybe you’ll end up selecting someone who’s a slightly less talented coder.If they’re a cultural fit, absolutely. But there’s a caveat. You want them to have similar values, but they don’t need to be your best friend. Too often, founders think, “Oh, I need to get along with them.” We overrate that. It’s important to have a diversity of personalities. Risk aversion, for instance, is more of a personality preference than a value. And that’s actually a really good thing to have diversity on. I know one founding team that has a CEO who’s extremely risk-prone. If it were only up to him, he would scale way before his company is ready. But he’s paired with a great CTO who’s very good at putting on the brakes. And together the two of them balance out. So it’s also knowing yourself and your personality. And then finding complementary teammates. But when it comes to personality traits, how do you narrow it down? There are dozens of personality types.Whatever is more salient to you. If you had to describe yourself in five words, what pops into your head? Like I said, risk aversion is a big one. Optimism and pessimism are also important. Do you actually want a pessimist on your team?Yes. There’s research on that, showing that too many optimists can be bad for startup performance. Having a contrarian can be a great thing, especially at startups, where people tend to have such rose-colored goggles about the future. Having someone who’s more realistic can help turn around some pretty bad decisions. How do you make sure that you’re asking the right questions and doing the right research on someone so that you get to know their personality?Take your time. My favorite advice I’ve heard from VCs to founders is, “Hire slow, fire fast.” That one rule alone could save a lot of startups, because people are often far too quick to jump into relationships. If you meet a new coder who’s a friend of a friend, a one-day interview isn’t sufficient to say, “OK, you’re hired.” You need to go slow because it’s really hard to fire someone after you bring them on board and get to know them. Beyond the legal issues, it takes a lot of emotional gumption to make that decision, especially if you’re an early-stage founder and you haven’t done it before. Some startups will take six months to fire someone who doesn’t belong. But in six months, the wrong person can corrupt your culture. Because, like you said, it’s a marriage.And it’s really hard to end a marriage. Emotionally, financially. You just don’t want to go there. That’s why it’s so important to take your time before you hire. You want to engage with them in a lot of different contexts. If you’re hiring a CTO, give them a task similar to what they’d be doing in your company. Give them two weeks to work on it, and see how they do. Also, spend time with them one on one and in groups. Look at them across a variety of social situations, and look for indicators in behavior and personality. Just asking someone questions doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. It’s very easy for smart people to appear socially desirable. There’s a startup I know where they really value having a positive, kind culture. The CEO has arranged his office so that when he’s at his desk, he looks out at his secretary. When people come in for an interview, his big thing is to watch how they interact with his secretary. If they’re kind and courteous or dismissive and abrupt, that’s a strong yes or no indicator for him. Taking your time must be especially important when choosing co-founders.Definitely. You want to spend months with someone before you formally commit to a partnership. We’re actually doing new research now in the realm of close-relationship analysis, looking at the benefit of prenuptial agreements between founders. With my students, one of the big things I ask before they commit is, “Have you had a fight yet? Do you know what this person is like when things get stressful and ugly?” And if you haven’t seen that yet, then you need to find ways to gently explore how this person will react if you disagree with them or stress goes up. Really?Yes. Push back on something much harder than you usually do, and see their reaction. That can reveal a lot. I’ve had students come back to me saying, “Oh, my gosh. I’m so happy I did that. That was terrifying.” Have you ever heard any stories of people who feel like they’ve been falsely seduced during the founder-dating period?Oh, yeah. It can happen. Are there ways to guard against that?References. Talk to people who’ve worked with the person before. See how they are with other people. Once you’ve hired a new team, how do you keep them marching in the same direction?You have to put more effort than many founders realize into communicating your mission and your vision What’s your distinction between vision and mission?It’s something that we talk a lot about in my class. Mission, to me, is a very brief statement of purpose. “What’s our reason for existence?” So, again, for Disney, it’s “we want to make families happy.” For Stanford, it’s “bring knowledge to the world.” A vision, on the other hand, is, “Where are we going with that? How are we going to do it?” It’s action-oriented. The best ones usually also have a timeline and goals that you can benchmark against. Richard Branson has a great saying: “A good mission statement should fit on a coat of arms.” And that mission statement should not only dictate your hiring decisions, it should also be embedded in your rituals. How you celebrate success. How you decorate your office. What you do with your off-sites. That mission should be everything. And the vision should be, “Where are we going?” Do most of the companies you study succeed at that?Hire slow, fire fast. That one rule alone could save a lot of startups, because people are often far too quick to jump into relationships. Lindred GreerActually, no. When my students go in to study startups, the single biggest problem they see is lack of alignment around the mission and vision. We usually look at companies with about 10 people. They’ve done their first round of hiring, and they’re often still in Series A funding. My students go through and ask people, “As a company do you know where you’re going? Do you know how to contribute?” And most employees say, “No, we really don’t.” And you tell that to the CEO, and he or she will say, “Well, I told them six months ago what the vision was.” It doesn’t work that way, especially in startups. Things change so much and so quickly. Six months is forever. You have to keep emphasizing in all your internal communications: “Who are we and what are we doing right now? What is our goal?” Is building a team something that you can get better at with training?Second-time entrepreneurs are astronomically better than first-time entrepreneurs in building teams and creating startups that succeed. The number one reason startups fail is people problems, and the second time around, entrepreneurs realize this. Source:www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/how-build-better-startup-team Korean online job-seeking platform Jobplanet said on Thursday that millennials in Indonesia were becoming more interested in working for start-up companies, especially in the IT industry.
Jobplanet chief product officer Kemas Antonius said young people were willing to work for tech start-ups because they offered dynamic work environments, good career prospects, and attractive employee benefits and compensation. “The IT industry is booming now because of mushrooming tech start-ups. Previously, when young people looked for jobs, they [targeted] established private or state-owned companies,” he said in a discussion in Jakarta. Jobplanet’s survey from November 2015 to October 2016 of 470,000 employees across the country revealed that mobile commerce start-up Sale Stock topped the list of best companies to work for, followed by e-commerce platform Blibli, Tokopedia, MatahariMall and homegrown ride-hailing app company Go-Jek. The company's study was conducted based on employees’ written reviews on its platform, which comprised five criteria: employee benefits and compensation, career path, company culture, work-life balance and the company’s management. The most highly rated companies were those that received a score above 3.5 out of 5. Sandra Kumalasari, the head of human resources at Blibli, said her firm aimed to attract young employees to work for them through providing a comfortable work environment. “We promote an open-door policy where everyone is encouraged to stop by whenever they feel like they need to ask questions, discuss or address their problems. Our CEO is also very accessible,” she said. (win/evi) Source:http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/12/16/jobs-in-start-up-companies-most-attractive-for-millenials.html In the course of my career over the past decade or so, I have started 3 businesses — with varying degrees of success. I thought it would be interesting, and potentially helpful, to share what I have seen in the course of starting, operating and exiting those businesses — each of which was very different from the others in important ways. I have talked with many founders whose business goals are a bit ambiguous, and who are making key decisions in one area that are not in alignment with their decisions in another (hat tip to an all-time favorite professor of mine, Noam Wasserman, and his book The Founder’s Dilemmas for some of the thinking here).
One useful way to think about some of those key decisions early on can be made clearer if you have decided whether what you are building is a startup or a small business. Many people group those into the same category — and that is fine, from a nomenclature standpoint. But there are some key decisions that you will make about your business that will determine if it is more of a “startup” in the traditional sense, or a “small business” in the traditional sense — and bringing those decisions into alignment can help you save time and heartache, and can affect the financial and career outcomes you achieve. Although this process covers a number of steps, one of the key decisions you should consider as you start and run your business is how fast you can grow, and how fast you want to grow. Think about what you want your business to look like in 5 years. Do you imagine a smoothly humming machine, kicking off enough cash for you to take a few nice vacations every year, giving you time to volunteer, engage with your community and work every day to make it a little better? That’s what you would normally think of as a “small business.” Profits are prioritized over hyper-growth, often leading to predictably positive net income after a few years of very hard work. Alternatively, do you imagine a company on its way to the moon? Do you imagine your company hiring as quickly as it can, racing to take a lead position in an ultra-competitive marketplace, and potentially looking to raise millions of dollars to keep up 100 percent or more year-over-year growth? This is the “startup,” where growth is king, profits are pushed back chronologically (if not deprioritized completely), and you are aiming for the company to — one day — be worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. Too often, it is unclear to founders which one they are choosing. For example, they will choose a business idea in a slowly growing industry (small business), but try to raise money from venture capitalists (startup). Or, they will expect to have a great lifestyle (small business) with a company that’s on its way to a billion dollar valuation (startup). Lower-growth companies can lead to great lifestyles. Because the growth rates are low, there is minimal investment from venture capitalists or other institutional investors. Because there is minimal investment, competition is usually local or regional, and can be less sophisticated. These dynamics, in turn, leave an opening for savvy, hard-working business owners to do really well in their corner of the market. Service companies are a great example of this. You rarely see an agency scaled to be worth a billion dollars — but sound business practices can lead to fantastic local, regional and, in some cases, national success. In these cases, owners can often produce a great stream of income for themselves and their employees. Higher-growth companies, on the other hand, often mean short-to-medium-term terrible lifestyles for their founders — with a larger potential payoff (often a windfall upon acquisition). When a company is growing fast, its valuation is often a multiple of revenue (like in software-as-a-service companies) as opposed to profits — or even based purely on strategic concerns (think WhatsApp being acquired by Facebook for $19B, with revenue of just $10M). With sky-high multiples, institutional investment often follows, and where there is VC money there is increased competition (national or worldwide), intense pressure to keep growing, and hefty accountability for founders to their board and their shareholders. There is also often enough dilution for founders that they lose control of their company entirely. They could be fired from the company they created. That being said, a high-growth company that increases revenue significantly year after year means the founder may be getting a smaller piece of the pie — but it is a pretty big pie. In sum, when you are starting a company, ask yourself: How fast do I want to grow? How fast can I grow given the dynamics of the industry I have chosen? If I want to grow fast, do I have the team around me to help me do that? And what does that mean for my business, my lifestyle? When it comes to growth, do I want to run a small business or a startup? Source:http://www.alleywatch.com/2016/12/startup-actually-small-business/ By Seth Klamann Ten student teams will pitch their startup business plans next year for a $15,000 grand prize through the University of Wyoming.
The contest, officially called the John P. Ellbogen $30k Entrepreneurship Competition, originally had a record-setting 76 teams competing, according to a UW news release. The top-placing teams of the 10 finalists will successfully pitch business plans that “show significant business potential.” The judges, which typically are venture capitalists but will also include educators and entrepreneurs, will examine the proposals’ financials, their need — or lack of need — in the market and students’ passion for the ideas. The teams will also be judged on their likelihood of keeping their businesses in Wyoming, said Steve Russell, the business college’s marketing and external relations director. Keeping these new business startups in Wyoming is a primary part of the competition, he said. The final teams have been paired with a mentor to counsel them on their proposals, Russell said. Those mentors vary from alumni to community leaders who work in areas that are helpful to the teams. Russell said the advisers are just as helpful to winning teams as the prize money. The mentors can help teams “jump over potholes that others have stepped in over the years,” he said. The 10 finalists will pitch their startups at a conference on April 20 at the Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center. The event is open to the public. The competition, which has been held for about 15 years, has grown in the past three years from 14 applicants in 2014 and 47 last year to 76 this year. The winning team will receive $7,500 after the competition and an another $7,500 after a “satisfactory progress report” is submitted later. Russell said the progress reports should show that the teams have used the first half of their prize money to improve their winning ideas. That can mean attending conferences or buying needed equipment. The second place team will win $7,500, and the third place winner will take home $5,000. Both teams will also receive half upfront and half after showing their progress after the competition. The teams‘ pitches are: A peer-to-peer cleaning service” that allows a client to post a short description of an area that needs cleaning to an app or website. Cleaners can view the request and submit bids. A hardware and software platform that transforms speech to digital text. A new method for microgravity, or “space-like,” testing that prepares objects for space travel. Source:http://trib.com/news/local/casper/uw-k-entrepreneurship-competition-pits-startup-teams-against-each-other/article_2be34c48-6fb5-5401-a087-fb32235afb0e.htmlhttp://trib.com/news/local/casper/uw-k-entrepreneurship-competition-pits-startup-teams-against-each-other/article_2be34c48-6fb5-5401-a087-fb32235afb0e.html By Glenn Muske
I am not a regular television watcher but happened to catch a “60 Minutes” episode recently (http://tinyurl.com/60Minutes-socialmedia). The episode focused on how influencers are marketing using social media. Although I follow and use several social media platforms to help reach small-business owners, most of this information was new to me. But it was not surprising. Social media has great capacity to reach certain audiences. And it can do it quickly while ignoring conventional marketing practices. So what does this mean for your marketing effort? Perhaps a lot or maybe something, or it could mean nothing at all. The intent of this article is to help you get the greatest return from your marketing. When looking for return, the first thing you must do is define what that means to you. Is it simply the number of people who see your marketing, or is it an increase in revenue? Once you know what you are looking for, your next step is to know your audience or audiences; • Who are they? • What is their most pressing problem, desire or issue? • Where are they getting their information, who are they following, and when and how are they accessing the information? • What motivates them to take action? • Whom do they trust? This information can help you determine what marketing channels might be your most effective tool. Is it traditional channels, including print, radio, television, customer service and public relations, or something online, from a website to email to videos? Yet don’t assume this information is constant. We know that the boomers are rapidly moving online, so what worked today might fail tomorrow. Your information also will give you an idea of who is “trusted” by each audience. For example, while the silent generation and baby boomers might trust certain key figures, the millennials look toward people like themselves. Chances are, you will need to use several channels. I say this because you probably are looking to attract a diversity of people. Also, even within one group, you cannot assume they all are alike. I, for example, am much more into social media than is my spouse. What is important, as you are deciding on marketing channels, is the three basic building blocks of marketing. These are yourself and your networking, your reputation/brand and your ambassadors, or those who are telling your story for you. So as you plan your marketing, remember: • Your audience should guide what you do. • Keep measuring. • Be ready to change. By doing these three things, you will increase your chances of having effective marketing. For more help, visit our website, https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/smallbusiness, and sign up for the monthly newsletter. More information is available at your local Extension office, as well as at http://powerofbusiness.net and http://www.eXtension.org/entrepreneurship. The Small Business Administration and its related organizations, such as the Small Business Development Centers and Service Corps of Retired Executives, along with many other state agencies, also can be valuable resources. Source:http://www.farmforum.net/news/small-business-savvy-effective marketing/article_0057bb07-0bd2-5470-883b-3f7ef204cda6.htmlhttp://www.farmforum.net/news/small-business-savvy-effective-marketing/article_0057bb07-0bd2-5470-883b-3f7ef204cda6.html By Elizabeth Doran SYRACUSE, NY - Euphony, a Syracuse-based startup company, has won $100,000 in the Germinator business competition program sponsored by CenterState CEO.
Euphony, based in the Syracuse Tech Garden; and Life Source Health, pitched for the top prize before a panel of judges earlier this week. Euphony's text-to-speech software solutions allow people with speech communication disorders to express emotions through speech. "We are excited to award them this prize as we know this company will return our investment through its contribution to the region's economy," said Robert M. Simpson, president of CenterState CEO. Simpson said the $100,000 prize is a significant investment in an emerging company, especially when combined with the $150,000 investments its has received over the past 18 months of the program. Fuz Eller, founder and chief executive officer of Euphony, said he's thrilled to win the $100,000. "We are absolutely excited,'' he said. "We get to keep going with this money and grow. It's been a dream, and now we're able to finish that dream." Euphony's software allows text to convert to speech and express emotion. Software would be used by people who are nonverbal or have communication disorders. A person could text a message to someone and communicate anger, happiness or sadness with this software, Fuller said. The company, which has about $80,000 in revenue so far, sells its product everywhere English is spoken. Eller, who started the company from his Canastota home in late 2013 and then moved to the Syracuse Tech Garden, has another employee and six interns. A native of England, Eller, 51, is a retired Air Force cryptologic linguist who helped monitor enemy locations all over the world. When he retired and was living in Omaha, NE he was asked by Syracuse-based SRC Inc. to join the company. He worked for SRC for 10 years before forming his own company. With the $100,000, Eller said he'll be able to roll out the newest version of his software in January. Elller said he's grateful to the Tech Center and Germinator program for the mentorship, training, support and funding. "It would have been near impossible without that help,'' he said. Eller said the company is seeking investors, and once that happens expects to create more high tech jobs in Central New York. The Germinator startup competition began with six teams in early 2015. As companies go through the competition, they also receive access to the marketing, intellectual property, sales, financing, fundraising support and more. Germinator is made possible through lead sponsors National Grid and M&T Bank. Source:http://www.syracuse.com/business-news/index.ssf/2016/12/start-up_company_wins_100000_in_syracuse_business_competition.html By Stephen Sheinbaum Small business owners have an uneasy relationship with marketing. According to a recent study by Vistaprint Digital, only 37.4 percent of small business owners rate spending time on marketing as “very” or “fairly” important. On the other hand, big businesses invest big money in their marketing efforts—with big results that help them dominate many sectors of our economy. Your small business can’t, obviously, match the marketing spend of a Proctor & Gamble or Amazon, but you can match their smarts by focusing on these aspects of a marketing plan in 2017.
Online presence: The internet has been a great leveler of businesses. Before it came along, small businesses often struggled to sell in the next town over, let alone the next state. Now, having a website can help you sell well beyond your local market, but too many small businesses lack websites, especially websites that work well on smartphones. That can mean you are missing out on local sales too: According to a study from Bazaarvoice, roughly 39 percent of in-store shoppers research a product online before buying at a physical location. Recommended for YouWebcast, January 12th: Leveraging Urgency and Scarcity for Increased Sales It won’t cost a lot to have a 21st century online presence. There are many free website design tools online now, like Wix and Weebly where you simply drag the photos of your business and products into a ready-made template. These tools will also guide you on creating a website that search engines like Google and Bing will track, which is important to landing on the first page of a prospective customer’s search. Need a fancy chart to demonstrate why you’re the best choice? Use Canva (also free) to create professional-looking graphics. The last part of your online presence is to utilize social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Pick the one that most of your customers are likely to use and master it. You should also explore advertising through social media: More than half of the small business owners who responded to a recent eMarketer poll said they mainly use social media for their marketing. Email campaigns: Yes, email still has big potential for small businesses. According to a report by McKinsey & Co., 91 percent of all U.S. consumers use e-mail daily. Step one on using email effectively is to get the email address of everyone who now does business with you. If you have a new point-of-sale (POS) terminal, you should have the capability of emailing customers their receipts instead of printing them—and collecting their addresses. Online order systems collect emails as part of the delivery verification). Once you have the email addresses in hand, send out a weekly or monthly newsletter on deals, new products and the like. Email tools that have been designed for small businesses like Constant Contact and MailChimp are priced with a small business budget in mind. Local advertising: There should be a place for advertising in every small business’ marketing budget. Focus on where your customers are: Younger consumers will likely best be reached by online ads or social media ads, while older consumers may still be most responsive to print advertising. If you’re targeting parents of school-age children, take a look at the programs for cultural and sports events at schools. While buying a whole billboard may be beyond your budget, many markets now have digital billboards that let you buy a share of the display space. Track your progress: Whatever local advertising method you choose, have a clear idea of how you will measure and track success. If you mail out a coupon and no one redeems it, don’t use that approach again. There are ways to track other marketing programs too. Install Google Analytics on your website, and make time each month to see how many visitors you are getting, how they are getting to your site and what they are doing once they are there. If you’re an electrician and most people are coming to your site through a search for solar panels, consider featuring your solar services on the home page instead of general electrical work. Whenever you have a new customer in person, ask them how they heard about you. It might just lead you to your next great marketing idea. Source:www.business2community.com/small-business/marketing-can-help-small-business-2017-01732962#0hBydSsTFyRw4rLg.97 |
Marcus Guiliano
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March 2020
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