Hiring a Co-Founder

Probably the first very important task of an entrepreneur, building a strong founding team. An entrepreneur should first sit down and identify what skills would be required to execute the business idea well. Once you have the skills listed down, you can start the process.

Look Within your Network: You know the skills you require. Start looking within your network of family, friends and acquaintances. Finding someone you already know is beneficial as you already have some background about the person.

Listing on Websites: There are various websites for finding cofounders, some being https://www.cofounderslab.com, angel.co, http://hiringdecoder.com.

Networking: Start joining clubs and networks in your country which are based on themes/skills which are required by you. For instance, in Beveragewala, we were looking for someone with Tea/Coffee retailing experience. I had joined the different Tea/FMCG marketing groups in Delhi & Mumbai to meet and identify people who could possibly join us.

Events: Attend startup events and try to meet as many people as you can who may be interested in startups. Keep pitching your idea to people who interest you. You never know when and where you might find the right one.

Take your time in identifying the right person to join you. Do not hurry this up as it is very crucial to induct someone who will be a good fit. Also in the meanwhile, keep pushing the idea yourself.

Be the Dumbest Person in the Room

Entrepreneurs should have a tendency to be the dumbest guys in the room, For this, they will need to hire the best people to join them in their startup. An entrepreneur should never feel insecure about letting good people in, thinking that the latter might end up becoming more valuable than the former and might end up starting out on their own as well.

A good entrepreneur will always take in the best people, motivate them and keep learning from them on a continuous basis.

First Time Founders - can they succeed?

A question a lot of budding entrepreneurs think when they start out. During my first attempt at starting up, I used to feel that I am young and have no experience in building a business. Will I be able to succeed competing against people with previous startup experience?

I feel that starting up the first time has it's disadvantages but also has a host of advantages. An untested entrepreneur will have no baggage, i.e. he will not have any bad experiences to be careful about and will not tend to over analyse things. He would be energetic about his/her idea and will keep on experimenting. His lack of experience may lead to him/her wasting some time and resources on some experiments, but overall having no previous baggage will ensure he keeps on pushing hard at all things he feels will deliver. Entrepreneurship is a lot about gut feeling as well, and a first time founder can use this better than an experienced one.

Quoting an article based on a survey by Shasta Ventures, they found that

'Surprisingly, it is most often untested founders, rather than experienced entrepreneurs, who are at the helm of large, fast growing companies. Three-out-of-four of the companies in our survey, of how billion dollar companies look like at the Series A, were built and run by people who were doing it for the first time.'

“You have to act and act now.” – Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

Larry Ellison was born in New York City to an unwed Jewish mother. His father was an Italian American US Air Force pilot. According to Wikipedia, Ellison contracted pneumonia when he was  nine months old and his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. His adoptive mother was warm and loving, while his adoptive father was unsupportive and distant.

He was a bright but inattentive student. He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year without taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died. Later, he attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to northern California.

In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000. In 1982, the company became Oracle Systems Corporation after its flagship product, the Oracle database. Currently, Ellison owns stakes in Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Quark Biotechnology Inc. and Astex Pharmaceuticals. In September 2011, Ellison was listed on the Forbes List of Billionaires as the fifth richest man in the world. Ellison is still the third richest American, with a net worth of about $36.5 billion.

(taken from yourstory.com)

Biases of an Entrepreneur...

During my startup journey, I realised that a lot of times we tend to develop biases about a lot things which cloud our mind and tend to inhibit the proper growth of the venture. Some of these include:

- 'Build your product for yourself' bias: When thinking about what is the perfect product, we tend to assess what we would like to see in the product and go ahead and build based on that. We need to remember that we are not the customers. Getting relevant and adequate feedback from others (preferably in the target market) is extremely important for an optimal product to be developed.

- 'I can manage everything' bias: It is a common human tendency to not accept one's own mistakes and inadequacies. An entrepreneur must know and accept what his/her strengths and weaknesses are. Only once you know can you build on the weaknesses. 

- 'Make a run for it' bias: This is the bias I faced a lot. This means that once I finalised my initial business plan, I started focusing on the execution and got so involved in the daily running of the venture, I completely forgot to assess the progress and growth of the venture from time to time. Focus is very important for any startup. However, the venture needs to be analysed from time to time to ensure that we are moving in the right direction.

These are some of the biases I have faced personally in my journey. I am sure there would be many more. All of us should learn from each other's mistakes and ensure that our venture's growth is not inhibited by any of these factors.

The Importance of a Good Founding Team!!!

This is a very sore point for me. I cannot emphasize enough how important a good founding/management team is. Currently I have some good ideas in my mind and have this great urge to start out again on one of them, I am just staying back because I don't have and am not currently being able to build a good team around the idea. I believe that ideas contribute around 30% of a startup's success, the rest comes from the ability to execute the idea. And to execute well, you need a 'good team'!

Let's take an analogy to understand this. In raising a child, the mother and father both have a significant role to play. The mother can provide the child with the warmth, love, care and the finer things in life. The father is more responsible for the safety, comfort and the more basic needs of the child (this is generally the case and differs totally from case to case :). Hence, the parents need to jointly complement each other and provide the child an environment where the latter can fully grow and realise his/her potential. Same is the case in a startup as well. Founders, with complementary skills, need to come together and create a structure and culture in which the business can grow and flourish. Skill sets of the initial team are key. For example, in the case of a Online Tea Retailing company, ideally founders should have the following skills within the team:
Online - Technology Expertise
Tea - Domain Expertise
Retailing - FMCG Retailing Expertise
Not necessarily will all teams have all requisite skills. But I suggest that each founding team should try to incorporate as many skills as we can within the team as it betters the chance of success.

Startups are all about risk. A good team is a big factor which can help mitigate the risks involved. So the better the team, the better will be the execution and the better the chance of building a sustainable business.