How to build a successful founding team?
Crafting a successful founding team. ChatGPT solution for your own databases and prompts. AI Lithuania Hackathon.
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This is Exponential Founder. Twice a month, we share resources & information for aspiring founders, entrepreneurs, and startup enthusiasts.
In today’s post, you’ll find:
What makes up a successful founding team?
A week of a hackathon dedicated to AI solutions.
An easy-to-use, ChatGPT-based solution for your own databases and prompts.
Remote work opportunities.
And much more! 😎
"An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down."
- Reid Hoffman
Founding team: underrated or overrated part of success?
Crafting the ideal founding team is often seen as a two-way street: some people overthink the structures of the team and thus lose focus on the main problem, while others tend to delve into things and underestimate the effects that the co-founding team has on future performance.
Although a startup may possess boundless potential with its solution to a problem and fit the market, internal issues among the team can swiftly lead to failure.
According to various research, having the wrong team is identified as the top 3 reasons why startups fail.
Therefore, it's time to look into the elements that constitute the perfect founding team.
Who should be in the successful founding team?
The key to a successful team starts with you - identify not only areas where you feel comfortable and have the expertise but also the ones that you are not confident with and are important in the priority list. It’s like finding missing pieces of a puzzle.
Later, the team can be assembled by seeking an interpersonal fit strategy (common connections, friends) or a resource-seeking strategy (complementary skills fit). Research suggests that a combination of two strategies yields the most successful team outcomes.
Ultimately, when breaking down an efficient founding team, two skill types are often distinguished: hard vs soft skills.
Firstly, hard skills are essentially a member's experience in a professional field. It is important that within a team, members have complementary hard skills. For instance, a product developer who launched over 20 products and a coder who built over 5 software solutions would make a better team than two coders with similar work experience. However, there is one BUT. This is where soft skills come into play.
Soft skills are more intrinsic personality qualities, such as passion and vision for an idea. Typically, a 3H framework for soft skills is highlighted as the foundation for a successful founding team:
Hipster: members who work in a mix of designing and making creative and cool solutions for the final product/service.
Hacker: members who bring an idea or an initiative to life. Works with “how?” types of problems and questions.
Hustler: members that are considered as main representatives of a business, driving its strategy and always questioning if a product/solution is right for clients/users/partners.
Foundr’s article provides a more detailed analysis of what makes founding teams more successful and better performing in the long run.
Where does the golden ratio lie in hard vs soft skills?
It is crucial to have a fine balance of both: hard and soft skills. An example below shows how emphasizing one or the other skill type may lead to inefficiency or misalignment.
Example: A person who is a hustler by nature and has a specific skill set in product development with a proven experience in product development matches with an experienced coder to solve a problem he/she validated in the form of software. The coder has a proven track of developing software and, given the expertise, thinks he/she knows what is best that the hustler wants, thus not aligning with initial goals. In theory, you would not even question the hard skills and abilities the two members of such a combination team could achieve, however, not aligning on soft skills makes the team less efficient and prone to more confusion and conflict.
Overall, it is crucial that both types have a role in building a team. However, I would suggest aligning soft skills with team members first in the early stages of startup conflicts. This will, in turn, set a common ground personality-wise, while focusing on hard skills would become a concern for longer-term development.
And that’s a wrap about today’s topic, “Founding team: underrated or overrated part of success” Below, you’ll see some other opportunities, resources, and startup news that could be interesting for you.
Opportunities
🔥 Want to test your AI-related startup idea? I guess this hackathon is for you.
🤠 Check out what Firstpick.vc portfolio startups are hiring.
Interesting resources
🤖 Want to implement ChatGPT with your own prompts and database? Try BasaltAI.
⚖️ Struggling with accountability while developing an idea? Check out Indie Hackers’ thread with accountability communities’ suggestions.
🧠 Need practical templates during your startup journey? Visit Founder Resources to get inspiration for every stage of startup development.