Building Startup teams

Building a startup is such a uncharted journey that a tribe of like-minded entrepreneurs sharing what works for them and doesn't makes the journey a lot more predictable. That's why we created Club42. Not everyone who applies gets through - we scrutinize a lot. Of the 196 people who applied, 16 made the cut.

Building a team around your startup is one of the key skills to learn as an entrepreneur. Here are some best practices which will keep your team performing well.

1. Define the style of work early on - are you a goals oriented CEO, activities or tasks oriented CEO. Set that clearly so that the team can work on sharing information on that level with you.

2. Whenever you are making decisions, explain your thought process behind it and the fundamental value system it is anchored on. Document it and put it in the manual - over time, the team will know exactly how to act / react to various scenarios without coming to you for everything.

3. Set a rhythm: Some companies have a habit of having an all hands meeting on Monday mornings - where everyone knows the highlights of what folks are working on, and again on Friday evening to do a quick recap - and feedback is given so that teams can go have weekends with the family without taking work home. Relieve them of work, so that they go home, recompress and come to work next week.

4. As founders we have a habit of waking up in the middle of the night with ideas and I have a habit of firing off emails or posting in the slack channel. Explicitly tell your team that while you post all times of the day / week you don't expect them to read or respond to them immediately. As long as the relevant person reads / responds to the posts that are appropriate during the working day, its all good (unless it is tagged as urgent - in case of that, have a clear escalation scenario).

Use specific tags for the information you are passing on, so that teams know which is FYI, what is a suggestion, what requires action, what requires discussion etc.

5. Commit to a Fortnightly (once in two weeks) all hands meet - where you set a casual environment for the team to interact with you and ask questions. Be approachable and do it as an AMA.

6. There are some things that you can do when you are a less than 10 people team that you will never be able to do after your team grows - pack everyone into two cars and go on a off-site, and work out of there for a day or two once a quarter. The first 20 people will anchor the culture of your org. Build a strong rapport with them.

7. Find a way to pick up things before it becomes issues. One of the things we did during covid was while individual team members sent weekly reports on friday evenings, there was a small field that asked how did they feel this week - there were three emoticons, happy, blearh, terrible. If someone in the team is having a bad week three days in a row, the immediate manager / CEO has to get on a call with them and ask them "what can i do to help to help you succeed?" - it will help you save some fire fighting later on. If someone genuinely cant hope and it is a capability issue, you can find ways to help them upskill. If the person isnt committed, then you know its time to let them go at the earliest.

8. Develop a culture of reading / thinking and discussing them. The biggest risk that you have as an org is that all the thinking is happening just in the CEO's head and when you have a aha moment, everyone else has been so much in the dark, that it is a significant challenge to get them thinking in that direction. Whenever you have an insight or deep thought - share early on, so that the team is evolving along with you and the aha moment is not a surprise.

9. Teach the team early on the concept of linked responsibilities. One person's outcome is input for someone else, and the entire flow has to work well for the desired outcome to happen on a company level. When someone says "oh, that's not my job" - that's a problem. Every resource is a function that feeds into each other to deliver the overall result that is clearly trackable (the OKRs)

10. The key to keeping teams going is "unexpected delights".

What are some of the best practices that you have in your organization?