The Team's Strength Is the Startup's Strength
In a startup, a good business idea is the starting point, but then what matters is how you manage people to attain your objectives and outperform competition. Ideas and technical skills are necessary but not sufficient conditions for entrepreneurial success. An entrepreneur must be able to choose the people to work with and manage them effectively, otherwise the probability of failure runs high and other entrepreneurs can exploit similar ideas more effectively.
The main problem is that as individuals we tend to surround ourselves with collaborators who are similar to us. Similarity brings tranquility and we are naturally brought to believe that the optimal collaborator is the one who thinks like us. This keeps us in the comfort zone, but it does not expose us to new ideas that are vital contributions for an entrepreneur to turn his/her business idea into a commercial success. A valid team is able to see through the threats and vulnerabilities of a business project, and seek remedies and new strategies to address them. However, even a winning business idea is unlikely to conquer the market if supported by a mediocre team that is likely to stumble at the first obstacle or to be myopic about new solutions to be implemented.
A key ingredient for a successful startup team is to have people from diverse professional and geographic backgrounds, since such a team is likely to be more dynamic and creative than one composed of people of similar backgrounds. Having people coming from different contexts enables more professional contacts and provides the team with a more complete view of the market and its opportunities.
Diversity is key but it entails managerial complexity: diverse interpretations by various actors make it more difficult to strive for a common objective. It is then crucial in the formation of a startup team to focus and share the house rules to secure a better management of information flows and conflicts. Secondly, it is key to make explicit and share the entrepreneurial objective, so that the expectations of each actor are aligned to the common goal.
Summing up, if the team is the backbone of a startup, the entrepreneur must be able to motivate his/her team, including himself/herself, by putting everybody in the position of being able to answer the following three questions: Do we all think alike? Is it clear to all of us what our goal is? Am I aware of the contribution I can give and that the others expect from me? If the answer to the first question is no and to the other two is yes, you have a team ready to sail!