The best ways to kill your startup or people mean everything
You know, there are so many charts and list of why start ups fail, but those are too high-level, too short to recognise and understand the true reasons. I only know what I know, so would share with you my own experience through a multiple projects, companies and start ups.
Building a team of great professionals and tell them what they must do. Do not listen to them, they can only make things happen and know how to do it, but what to do must be said predominantly by you or a few other company leaders. You might be interested in my experience: What I learned after hiring 1000 candidates for technology industry: Organization perspective
Ask people to join based on their marketing talents, because they look like heroes in the web.
Leadership - no matters, if their experience is kind of irrelevant of what you want to achieve, they are good people and can change your industry because they don't know how.
Cultivate a culture it must be delivered by unrealistic dates, because it is needed and don't listen to people's opinions,because you know better what should be done. Kindly push everyone to support the plan, no matters what and even it is a time to stop everything and look around.
Start filtering information and motivate teams hiding real world data, real world progress and the most important - issues,problems, red flags.
Everyone joining should get double or kind of double salary.
Never concentrate on the most important thing. To be great you 18 must do so many great things as got your attention.
Make parts of the company work as a service - Something not important like Talent acquisition or Finance. So, their leaders KPI will be "our customers" are not screaming and happy we are hiring people, so we provide great service and no matter what people are joining and how many kind of instantly leaving because they don't suit.
Ignore what industry has done so far and never study what and why they make it this way. It is irrelevant, you must disrupt from scratch.
Promise investors a promise of deliver the best of the promising best in a most promising short time
Start from continuously make changes and improvements, add features every day and make them important. Once you have enough people in Leadership (even if their experience is irrelevant), just watch how is it going, even you know it is not going well.
I definitely will be adding more things into the list, but those are the most painful I've seen in my career so far and was struggling with them on my personal experience.
To be frank it can be applied to any company, any business, anything people do together. The reason is that every person in the team is important, but the team itself is more important than every individual in it. I'm as a founder and a leader should support people and guide them through the journey, listen to them (that's why I am hiring them, right?) and make their issues, problems, stoppers as my highest priority, so the team can make progress.
Some links on to related content - How to build trust in the team and Why cross-functional teams is a way to go - they are kind a more theoretical, but some ideas can be taken into account to avoid certain hard landings...
Not sure if it is about killing your startup, but recently I met with a founder of a silicon-valley startup which got some financing and want to recruit people. We know that hiring for a startup it is a challenge, but having a fear to hire people who are stronger than you and/or your team members is a very common mistakes.
So, I want to add to the list:
Have a fear of hiring people who are stronger than you - and one more - If your startup isn't fast most likely you're dead. In relation to hiring process, I'm a fun of no compromises in hiring, but the process should be fast. So, concentrate on the crucial positions and get them hired as quickly as you can.
We also recommend you to read:
Rethinking Leadership: Results, not Office Hours, Drive Success
Balancing Results and In-Person Presence: The Dynamic Approach to Modern Leadership
Building a team of great professionals and tell them what they must do. Do not listen to them, they can only make things happen and know how to do it, but what to do must be said predominantly by you or a few other company leaders. You might be interested in my experience: What I learned after hiring 1000 candidates for technology industry: Organization perspective
Ask people to join based on their marketing talents, because they look like heroes in the web.
Leadership - no matters, if their experience is kind of irrelevant of what you want to achieve, they are good people and can change your industry because they don't know how.
Cultivate a culture it must be delivered by unrealistic dates, because it is needed and don't listen to people's opinions,because you know better what should be done. Kindly push everyone to support the plan, no matters what and even it is a time to stop everything and look around.
Start filtering information and motivate teams hiding real world data, real world progress and the most important - issues,problems, red flags.
Everyone joining should get double or kind of double salary.
Never concentrate on the most important thing. To be great you 18 must do so many great things as got your attention.
Make parts of the company work as a service - Something not important like Talent acquisition or Finance. So, their leaders KPI will be "our customers" are not screaming and happy we are hiring people, so we provide great service and no matter what people are joining and how many kind of instantly leaving because they don't suit.
Ignore what industry has done so far and never study what and why they make it this way. It is irrelevant, you must disrupt from scratch.
Promise investors a promise of deliver the best of the promising best in a most promising short time
Start from continuously make changes and improvements, add features every day and make them important. Once you have enough people in Leadership (even if their experience is irrelevant), just watch how is it going, even you know it is not going well.
I definitely will be adding more things into the list, but those are the most painful I've seen in my career so far and was struggling with them on my personal experience.
To be frank it can be applied to any company, any business, anything people do together. The reason is that every person in the team is important, but the team itself is more important than every individual in it. I'm as a founder and a leader should support people and guide them through the journey, listen to them (that's why I am hiring them, right?) and make their issues, problems, stoppers as my highest priority, so the team can make progress.
Some links on to related content - How to build trust in the team and Why cross-functional teams is a way to go - they are kind a more theoretical, but some ideas can be taken into account to avoid certain hard landings...
Not sure if it is about killing your startup, but recently I met with a founder of a silicon-valley startup which got some financing and want to recruit people. We know that hiring for a startup it is a challenge, but having a fear to hire people who are stronger than you and/or your team members is a very common mistakes.
So, I want to add to the list:
Have a fear of hiring people who are stronger than you - and one more - If your startup isn't fast most likely you're dead. In relation to hiring process, I'm a fun of no compromises in hiring, but the process should be fast. So, concentrate on the crucial positions and get them hired as quickly as you can.
We also recommend you to read:
Rethinking Leadership: Results, not Office Hours, Drive Success
Balancing Results and In-Person Presence: The Dynamic Approach to Modern Leadership