Best Strategies to Build a Startup Team as a Non-tech Founder

As Steve jobs said “Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people” 

Almost 65% of startups fail when they fail to find a team that matches their startup goals. 

The initial team of every startup is crucial as they are also the reasons to attract more investors at the early stage.

So how can you build a successful startup, especially when you are a non-tech founder? 

Tricky question! The answer will be simple.

“Build your first team with teammates with the same passion and drive towards the startup goal as you”. 

Again, How to find that team?

We have curated this piece of the blog to answer this question. 

Let’s get started!

Best strategies to build your team

You need a team of people who help you grow a startup plant into an organizational-level tree. 

Building a winning startup is made up of two phases – Building a winning team and building a winning product. 

Make the best team using the actionable strategies below. 

Let’s get started.

Build for the long term

You have to scale up when reaching some success, while you hire make sure you have the long-term vision in mind.

See if the person’s mindset will be helpful in the long run. Look for administrative skills or people who are willing to learn the skills. 

So when you scale there will be less effort and friction to handle things. 

Write down all the departments your business needs in the future. 

The most common departments will be:/

• Marketing
• Product design
• Product development
• Accounting and finance
• Customer relations

You can add more to the list. Look for people who are experts in departments and choose them when your startups grow, they grow with you. 

Start from you

Self-awareness plays a key role in establishing the perfect team. 

Only when you know what skills you can bring to the table and where you lack, you will be aware of the positions that need to hire. 

If you are good at marketing and management, you need to look for people with expertise in development and financial management. 

While you evaluate your skills, look for both hard and soft skills. Soft skills are always overlooked but they are important for startups where ups and downs happen regularly. 

Once you know where your expertise is, look for people who can handle the rest of the responsibilities. 

Things to consider before hiring your tech team

As a non-tech founder, the challenging task is to hire the right people for the technical side. 

Before hiring mid-level or junior developers, hire one senior developer who gives you an idea of what to expect from other developers.

Hire a developer who has already handled the same kind of projects before. 

Look for a user-centric mindset in the people you hire. 

Do some homework – learn minimal about the tech stack or technology before starting the interview. 

Don’t just believe the resume, research the candidate beforehand. 

Hire individuals who have a passion for technology.

Communicate goals and vision

When you start your business, you start it small and go bigger. Every business goes that way. 

But what makes the best people to join when they are small is the vision and the goals of the startup. 

While hiring, communicate about your future vision and how you are picturing scaling the startup into an organization. 

Talk about your plans, they too will get an idea of their career growth in the startup. 

People who are experts in their field are always needed by many companies. So they look for more than the payout such as better vision and challenges.

Talk about the startup’s vision and tell them how their service will impact the growth of the product and the community. 

If you have a compelling vision then it will be easy to hire some top talents in town.

Jack of all trades

When you start hiring,  you need people who have expertise in their area. 

For many reasons like being short of funding or not going big at the early stage, you can’t hire people for every possible position that pops up. 

When you hire people for one essential position, look for the extra talents and skills they possess. 

People with more than one skill can give more to your startup. 

Let’s say you can’t hire a customer service person to handle calls at the early stage, when you hire a developer with good communication skills he/she can handle the customer handling for some time.

Hire people with more than one skill, it may be hard or soft skills. Look for more than one. 

Invest in a recruiter

Recruiting is not an easy task as has been seen. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. 

Many entrepreneurs feel finding the perfect fit is one of the tough jobs. Posting a job opening alone can’t attract people. 

When you find yourself struggling to find your tech team or marketing team, extend your eyes for more help. 

Hiring a recruiter may seem like an investment, but they can help you find the best talents. 

Experienced recruiters can find raw and top-notch talents easily.

Personality comes first

One of the easy ways to demolish your startup is by hiring an initial team where people won’t get along. 

You need a diverse group of people to maintain innovation and creativity, so we don’t people with the same mindset. What we need are team players who can move and work as a team.

While hiring the person talk about personal goals, and try to link how the job will be adding value to the candidate’s goals. 

Not all the people applying or you interview are there for the long run, some may come for time being or there are many reasons the candidate will be looking for short-term jobs. 

Make sure the job also provides value to the candidate excluding the payout. 

Learn to identify potential candidates

The whole process and efforts won’t work if you fail to identify the potential. 

It may need some practice and a little bit of learning to identify the potential candidates. You may find it difficult to get it right at the start. Once you get a clear path, it will be easy.

Key aspects to look for in  the potential candidates

• Autonomy
• Self-awareness
• Persistence
• Adaptability
• Learning capability
• Passionate
• Accountable

If you see more than 2 characters from the above list you can have a look at how they can adapt to your startup culture. 

You can hire and train people for improving skills, but the character can’t be trained. Train yourself to find potential you can take help from expert recruiters to make a strategy for identifying potential clients. 

Actionable tips for better hiring and team management

Not only hiring is tough, but once you onboard you need the best actions and collaboration to make the team go along better. 

Here are 8 actionable tips to help you hire & manage a team well for a successful startup.

1. 10% formula

Use the 10% formula from screening the resumes to selecting the candidate. 

For example, if you get 1000 resumes, select only 100 from the resume for the next step. From the 100 select only the top 10 for the final round.

2. Job description

Be more specific in your job description. Include information about the company. The job description will play the door to attracting top talents. Be precise about what you look for and what they get.

3. C-level titles

While you hire allocate C-level titles like CTO, CFO, CDO, and COO as there will be very less team members, it will give them a feel that – they are more important to the company.

4. Build a support system

Once you form a team, it is important to support each other in the startup ecosystem. Startups are more prone to sudden ups  and downs. Supporting each other throughout the process is very essential. 

5. Trust and delegate

There is no such thing as solopreneurs. n you become a leader, learn to trust your team and delegate the work according to the personal expertise of the team members. 

6. Rewards and milestones

Every success needs to be celebrated. Rewards can be big or small, proper appreciation always encourages the team to perform better. For example, team lunch for attaining a project goal can do wonders. 

7. Avoid hierarchical boundaries

When you need members in the long run you need to bring people together and avoiding hierarchical boundaries is really important. 

8. Buckle up the learning curve

Every startup comes as a trend and grows along with the trend. To understand trends better you need to keep the team and yourself learning the upcoming and recent trends. 

Resources to find your best team

Modern technology has led to many online platforms to find talent. Here is the list of methods to find different types of talent.

• LinkedIn
• By reference
• Search for your friends or colleagues.
• Target employees on Facebook
• Professional organizations
• Niche job portals
• Connect with local colleges and universities
• Tap into social media and hover over tech niche pages

Conclusion

In the end, we can easily understand – Right set of people keeps the business in the right direction. Also, the wrong set of people can make the business worse.

Make sure to employ proper strategies to hire people to build a startup team. 

Nowadays experience and innovation go hand in hand, you can’t rely on one. 

Implement the above-mentioned strategies in your hiring process and build an effective team for your successful startup.