The key to success in building a startup team is the ability to deliver important value to qualified customers. For most tech startups, that means having 3 founders, each with one (or more) of these three skills:
- Full Stack Developer
- User Experience & Front End Design
- Sales
When building a team for a startup, it’s important to make sure someone can deliver each of these skills, even if it’s not all the same person.
Full Stack Developer
Your full stack developer knows how to build product using the right technologies for the job. This person can work adeptly on both the back and front ends of the application. They can also configure your environment and push product to production. They’re typically familiar with contemporary frameworks like Ruby on Rails, Express.js, or Django, and know how to manage the development lifecycle.
User Experience & Front End Design
This person loves your user. Like, a lot. She wants to make sure that the application is intuitive, beautiful and, most importantly, useful. She also has the skills in Illustrator (or some other software like that) to execute it. Bonus points if she knows HTML and CSS. Uber bonus points for Javascript.
Sales & Business Development
This person knows how to listen, read people, and get customers. Customer Discovery comes naturally and they can provide feedback to developers and designers alike about what features are essential to go to market. They help scope the prototype and get the first 10 customers, who are critical to your startup’s success.
Good Working Relationships Matter
Of course, it’s important that the founders have good chemistry which is why many entrepreneurs start companies with friends, even if the skill sets aren’t particularly complementary.
This is usually a mistake.
Rather, it’s better to find people whose skill sets fill business needs and whose personalities work well together. But, filling the business’ needs comes first if it’s going to succeed. This mix of skills, particularly in a software startup, is usually the right place to start when it comes to building a startup team.
