The Next Big Thing… Part 2
Continued from the Last issue…
Share the Passion
Make sure that You, Your co-founders and your employees share the same passion for things. It’s not enough if you alone are in love with your idea. People working under you need to be too. Also make sure that team members respect each other. They can hate someone as much as possible. But there MUST be respect.
Hire the right people
If you, at any point of time, during recruitment, feel intimated by a candidate, DO NOT PROCEED. You cannot run a startup with a nagging thought running around in your head. Do background checks when hiring senior people. Find out if they created any legal/illegal issues during their tenure in their previous organization. Enquire about their family as well. It’s important. A man cannot give his 100% if his wife is expecting a baby any moment. Neither can he/she work if he always has this nagging worry about paying up their bills. Be discreet yet authoritative.
Don’t be biased
Just because you’ve got yourself a star-coder/hacker does not necessarily mean that you pay him the highest salary. Setup a power-parity structure and follow it strictly. Not following it is going to lead to a lot of bitterness and backbiting among your employees. When people want to leave, sometimes you should simply let them. It does not make sense retaining them at the cost of another developer/overhead. Once favoritism starts, everyone else begins to feel miffed.
Stay Divided. Stay United.
When splitting up shares, unless and until the situation demands otherwise, split the equity equally among all the founders. Make sure you get their written agreement on this. And do this as the first thing once you start issuing an IPO. By splitting up the equity you have shown your co-founders that you are also in it [for the money] and that they could move out whenever they want. Freedom to move out, usually keeps people locked in.
Stay in Touch…
…With the market. Make sure you are always aware of Market’s happenings. Twitter was born out of nowhere. Look at where it is now. Ensure you are reading the Market’s pulse and also your customers’. An outdated product will not help your customers. Similarly beat the rush. Visualize. Think Ahead. Nobody wants to stay behind.
Apart from the above, there are some more questions that every startup founder must ask himself.
#Are you spending too much money on Product Development or Employee salaries?
#Are you building over-complicated solutions for simple problems?
#Are you using outdated programming languages/management techniques?
#Do you have one [working] business model? Did you have it whetted by experts?
*By Business Model, we mean, a proper “Raw-Material-to-Finished-Product” kind of flowchart, which encompasses all the things that can happen to the product and what will be cost to company in case of that happens. For e.g. an entire Production line may be stalled due to maintenance activity. In such cases how to stick to deadlines and still deliver? What is the justification for the cost of your product? What is the production cost? What is the profit – These are some questions that are answered in a Business Model
#Make sure there are no legal issues. This is one thing that almost every other startup overlooks. Once the organizations picks up terminal velocity legal complications start arriving. Make sure you have all legal issues sorted out. Also ensure that you have one real good lawyer to help you out with the formalities.
#Are you a good leader? Do your employees look up to you? Do they feel inspired by you?
#The world changes quickly hence it’s important you are not married to a single product, process or website design. Keep evolving.
Have Faith. Be Lucky.
GodSpeed.
