On building a team
Nothing prepares you for leading a company, let alone a pioneering startup.?
It can feel like operating a train that’s moving at top speed while you’re also laying the tracks and figuring out the best route from A to B. Especially at an early stage, this means that having the right team is essential to survival and growth.
Hire driven perfectionists.
The people we came to value most for our team are both maniacally driven to achieve and huge perfectionists. But there’s a difference between perfectionists in the traditional sense and the way we look at it. Unproductive perfectionists will spend all their time optimising for breadcrumbs. Great perfectionists are on a lifelong ride to optimise their own genius. They have found their lane, understand their own skillset and mindset, and set out to improve on this perpetually. They don’t get stuck in fixing useless details, but make sure that their work becomes progressively better after each try. When we do something wonderful, we wake up the next day and do something wonderful again.
We have made mistakes before. We hired on perfect resumes, success in the system, and people simply willing to make a lot of hours if you told them so. The lesson we had to learn is that the greatest team additions are very much successful, but often not in the way degrees, internships, and corporate jobs illustrate that success. At least not when it comes to an ideas company like ours.
Great people demand freedom, ownership, and better teammates.
Corporations and institutions don’t hire people with cracks on the surface. This is one of the biggest tailwinds for start-ups and idea companies. Driven perfectionists burn out in those systems within 1 to 5 years. They demand freedom to experiment in ways these organisations can’t allow. They require full ownership over the wins and losses of their work—despising ‘ownership by committee’ or validation-hoarding managers. They also need great people around them to both learn from and rely on. We love being asked in job interviews about the other people in our team. Great people are concerned with their team members, both for their own sake and the others.
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Every person joining our team had received substantially better offers elsewhere, but still decided to join Haaven. We noticed that the right people saw much more value in working with other driven perfectionists. They also get much more joy from working on a big idea, with small chances of success, rather than joining the assembly line somewhere else.?
Team culture thrives on radical transparency.
Ownership, freedom, and success are only sustainable with real candor within the team. It sounds so easy, but nothing is easier than to not be transparent. Leadership sets the example and make itself vulnerable and open to criticism. But openess must be shared by the whole team. Differences in character are a given, but a solid foundation needs to be put in place. We all play a key role in this.
We were forced to see the value of real transparency early on. One of our team members was struggling a lot, mentally. This had a big toll on them, but also on the team. At the same time we were recruiting our first hires and while the person didn’t have to, they decided to tell the new recruitees already during the hiring process about their mental struggles. While we were afraid of this openess at first, it showed maturity, dedication, and team mentality. It gave the new people a real insight into our culture.??
The greatest team players ride rollercoasters to work. They are energised by tough challenges and understand that the destination is not guaranteed—this only motivates them more. Mindless conformity and straight lines to expected destination have no room in idea companies. We are fighting everyday not to become a bureaucratic sausage factory and enable great people to do wonderful things!