There is an interesting post doing the rounds on the blogsphere which talks about 17 tips for startups.
Most of these tips apply to the US, but some are universal, and the one I like the most: fire employees who are not workaholics. I totally agree with this one and strongly recommend that every startup apply it. You don’t need a big team, you need 2 to 3 people working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week with no vacations. Find them and keep them.
Anyway, that post was followed by a Techcrunch post, which was a startup not too long ago and the founder had his own advice.
If you have any additional advise then do share here in the comments section.
Here are some of my tips:
1. Try and outsource as much as possible. You may not be able to recruit great people because you are a startup, but you will find fantastic entrepreneurs who are available to work on your project in an outsourced capacity.
2. Cash is a very scarce in a startup. Try and do equity deals with outsourced companies, this will bring down your costs. You will be surprised how many are willing to take equity if they like your idea
3. Don’t recruit employees. Recruit co-founders. The best people no longer want to work for companies, they want to own them, so recruit co-founders. You will be amazed at the quality of people you get, far better than if you advertsied for employees. You will need to give them some stock, but that can come from the ESOP pool. Goto www.salary.com to see how much you should set aside for ESPOS
4. Drive the costs down of everything. Don’t be shy of bargaining.
5. Work like crazy, don’t relax, get everything done at 5 times speed. You will run out of money faster than you think. You customers will come later than expected. The only chance you have of beating the system is keeping costs low and working faster than money runs out.
- Fire employees who aren’t workaholics… - March 9, 2008
- How did you fund your startup? - February 7, 2008
- IAMAI Entertainment 2.0 - October 20, 2007
someone who read this post privately told me that “one should fire employees who are not customer sensitive”, which has a point.
In all this of firing employees I want to make a point that I personally do not believe in firing anyone, unless for extreme reasons. I believe that tremendous care must be taken in recruiting people not just at startup stage, but all stages. One must look for commitment, relevant experience, talent and leadership in people; and after that must constantly groom them for a happy team experience.
RYK,
I was drawing your attention to the correction made in the original link (calacanis.com) by the author himself. He has deleted the words “who are not workaholics” and replaced it with those “who don’t love their work”…
You got that joke now 🙂
Bipin & Krish, if you read what I have said and what I think the spirit of the original author was, is that, you want people who are living and breathing the project all the time. Ofcourse we all know that its not humanly possible to put in 18hrs everyday, but that figure was chosen for representational purposes to show the kind of commitment that is required in a start-up team.
RYK,
Make amends if you will. The author already has 🙂
I think it’s a lot better to retain people that are productive if not creative and original.
RYK,
I fundamentally disagree with the axiom that it is possible to work 18 hours a day , 7 days a week for more than a few months and be consistently smart in decision making. I think time off from what you are doing over a long term plays a crucial role in success. You want your star programmers to have a blast every weekend or two ( and sponsor it if you can) so that they are a) fresh b) motivated c) have something else to talk about. d) they know they are having fun both at work and off work.