Top 10 strategies to build up a winning startup team

While setting up a base for your newly established company, what do you think is the most important thing to consider apart from a great business idea & planning? Well it’s choosing & building a solid start up team!

What is a team anyway? It’s a group of people who work together in achieving the goal of a winning organization. Selecting the right team for your business decides the fortune for successful startups since your staff will serve as the backbone for your company.

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If you have already started working hiring the best team for your newly established startup, try considering some names who you think will be a good fit. Also, you must avoid the most common mistakes that most startups make.

Hi, I am Chandan Chakraborty a freelance website developer in Kolkata, India I am also running a web design company in Kolkata. I started my journey with a simple, common man from a small village. I had spent more than a decade doing full-time freelance web designing until I decided to come up with his own company. Here, I am sharing how I achieved and How my experience helps others who really dedicated to starting own company.

We have shared the top 10 tips/strategies that will help you selecting the best team cum assets for your startup:

1) Vision

A vision describes a mental image of what you want your business to be at some point in the future, based on your goals and aspirations. Having a vision is essential as it gives your business a clear focus, and stops you heading in the wrong direction. It is the vision only that separates your business to others. Choosing a team that goes along with the prospective vision of your company is thus important.

It is not worth to consider team members who are seeking the job for a short term of period. Instead, you should choose those employees who think like you, and work together to make a long-run success out of the startup. Consider these main things to let your business grow:-

Assess Your Current State – Business performance evaluations are important at any stage of a business; they’re a way to assess the company’s current state. Everyone has a different perspective if talk about evaluating the state of a particular business or company. Try considering this thing & let them know the big picture.

Setting up & Adjusting Financial Goals – Your financial goals must be realistic, measurable and reflective of the business’s age. Adjusting your financial goals is an important step to see where your business would go and how each member can give their best to attain it. Team must have a clearer idea to help the business to grow. This can help both your company as well the team prosper.

Develop Long-Term Priorities and Initiatives – Don’t rely on short-term objectives and try concentrating on long-term ones. It is seen that too much of a short-term focus can lead to a toxic environment in which employees become less motivated and more cynical. A long term goal will keep your team focused & active.

Build Confidence of Your Team, Offer Rewards– Appreciating your employees on their fair work will build up an enthusiasm that will motivate them further to achieve favorable results for the company. Offer rewards, remuneration & benefits to let them see the long-term success they have with you and the company. Evaluate the performance of your employees, know where they are standing, what they have to achieve. Acknowledge their good work & patiently let them know what they need to correct.

Following all these, you cannot only build a perfect team out of what you have but also explore & look out the ones who have the power to understand your vision be with you for a long term.

2) Building Camaraderie at Work Place

A company culture will lead the business to success or fail. Thus building a sense of community and camaraderie in your team is very important. You should try creating an environment where everyone feels connected in a meaningful way to the community.

Studies show that, if people are connected in a meaningful way with their co-workers, their productivity is higher and retention is longer.

Open communication, avoiding conflicts, respecting the differences of individuals and celebrate their values & giving away ownership are some keys for cultivating a positive working relationships between employees.

3) A Focused Team

“Startups are exhausting!” You might have heard this from a number of people who were once working with any startup company. There is no doubt that this is stressful yet this is not the case with all. They deny accepting the fact that sometimes startups lead to something wonderful.

This is one reason why some workers do not join startups. Working the same routine work at one place, and leave at 5 pm is not the types you are willing to involve in your team. Instead look for those with right focus who do not take the job as a burden.

4) Dedication

A startup is not like a typical corporate company neither it can survive with sheer luck. Startups are built from hard dedication of devoted employees working long hours to deliver explosive growth.

For the company to succeed, you need a unique team of dedicated people who focus on work rather than gossiping about company's success or comparing with the competitors in the market.

Your startup shouldn’t have employees who just sit around and gossip but you need people from diverse fields who are passionate enough to turn company’s goal to their personal goal.

5) Strong Communication

Communication is a key for a business to succeed. You cannot expect teamwork without a better communication between your staff. A Poor communication between employees can lead to mistakes, conflict, missed deadlines, and lost opportunities. Well, an aspiring business will not be going to take this risk. Thus evaluating team's communication skills is very essential. Ensure encouraging team building activities that will not only boost communication between teams but also help to build a level of trust & confidence.

6) Adaptability

Adaptability is the nature of changing or creating modifications in oneself to suit to the new environment. An adaptable person will carry out multiple tasks, manage multiple assignments by setting priorities and making changes to attitude to merge with the new culture.

For a startup, it is important to have a team that is adaptable enough. There are teams in which some are less passionate and can leave you in between while there are some team members who understand that the company is in the starting phrase, and would stay and adapt to give its best. Dealing up with the former one and appreciating the later one is necessary in order to build a strong team that can further grab success for your venture.

7) Combining Talents

Talent concerns the abilities, skills, and expertise that determine what a person can do. Bringing every member’s individual talent into one place is necessary for great businesses. Instead of hiring a team member with individual talents, you must rely on involving members who can or willing to handle multiple things. This will not only fulfill organization goal effectively but will cut down the extra cost.

For instance, hiring a combination of SEO + Content writer will be an added advantage for your business. Likewise hiring a Graphic Designer who also knows Website development will further aid talent & bring productivity of your business.

8) Keep an Eye on Metrics

A business metric is a measure that a company uses to monitor, track and assess the failure or success of your business. It directly involves total sales, costs, and a number of customers. Implementing effective metrics is thus necessary for customer satisfaction & retention.

Creating a product as per the prevailing market can be known only by Metrics. Your team members need to understand the metric. There are startups who invest in creating products that do not have any demand in the market. You don't want to repeat this mistake, right? Thus making use of metrics, you can keep a check what your company is doing and how it is going to reach the goals easily.

9) A Word for Founders

"Success or failure depends on the entrepreneur"

You must have listened to this many times. Instead of how much effort you have given in building a strong base for your business, it all comes back to the founder, in the end, be it’s in the form of success or failure. In the same way, the failure or success of a team depends on them since they are the ones that handle, manage and gather the team in the first place.

In addition to this, there are few things the founder should be aware of:

Taking your startup as a full-time job is a must for every Founder.

A Founder must choose the right people on the team who are motivated, enthusiastic looking to give their 100% with you.

Not everyone loves to have a technology "smart" product. Founders thus need to develop products that stand out from the crowd, something that everyone would buy.

A Founder should look for making & maintaining a place for his business in the industry rather than acquiring top positions.

To conclude it all, successful businesses have founders who are emotionally strong and are ready to take both good and bad positively and bring out the best in the company.

10) Considering Prior Experience

Hiring a team that has prior experience of running a startup would surely get your business a better advantage over the other competitors. Few things that a startup should consider before hiring & building a strong team for its prolonged growth include an industry-specific experience of your team, past achievements, etc.

We hope these ideas would help you select the type of team members you are looking for your startup. Apply these strategies to your team-building process and we assure you having an instrumental impact on your business.

Just remember- Great start-up teams build great start-up companies. Your startup needs team members who can make the company successful rather than those who are working just for the sake of money. Choose your team wisely as they are the ones who will help grow your startup into a huge success! And yes, don't forget to celebrate the milestones with your team along the way.