The founders of any company are very important. Whatever happens to your business from now on, you will always be rooted in its history. What you do now will be set in stone, etched forever in the foundations of your company. We know you want to give it the very best start.
So you might be wondering how you can build a strong founding team. How do you set yourself up for the very best start? How do you make sure your founding team are one that gives your company the best possible chance?
What makes a good founding team?
Having a team of supportive and passionate members of your founding team will help you through those difficult and complicated times you will face early days. You want people who bring a diverse range of skills and are happy to challenge you, push you forward, and support you.
You need a good balance of all of these qualities in order to create a good founding team. A founding team member who only ever supports your decisions is not going to be honest if they think you are taking the wrong course of action, that isn’t going to be helpful to you.
Aligned visions
One of the most important elements of your founding team is going to be your shared vision. This should be common sense. If your vision does not align with other members of your founding team you are going to be pulling in different directions, and that is going to cause anger in the worst case scenario and frustration in the best.
65% of startups that fail do so because of issues with the management team.
One of the best ways to avoid these issues is to align and agree on your vision in the very beginning. What are the aims and objectives of your business and how are you planning to get there? Is there a plan b? Is there anything either of you is greatly opposed to? It’s good to get these points agreed upon in the early stages so that there is a clear route forward from the start.
Cementing roles and responsibilities
Depending on how you started, your roles and responsibilities might have taken shape organically, but it is a good idea to agree these officially, so that there can be no argument about it further down the line.
In the early stages, you should make the founding team roles as equal as possible, but you should be aware that one individual typically steps forward as the leader eventually. Don’t fret about this. Cementing roles and responsibilities too early and too rigidly can be a huge waste of effort, since these tend to change as time moves on.
Remain flexible but clear about what needs to happen and who is going to do it.
Dealing well with disagreements
You might be in business bliss. You might think it is never going to happen. But eventually, you will have a disagreement. Knowing how to deal with these is pivotal to the success of your startup. As we said early, over half of failed startups fail because of issues with the founding team.
You must do some serious work around company culture to help build confidence and trust. This will help you to build a cohesive team, which is absolutely pivotal for success.
Supporting this cohesive culture and keeping your vision in mind will help you push forward towards your goal, rather than directing your energy inwards. That is particularly important if your energy is negative.
Do not underestimate how quickly you can unravel your hard work through poorly focused disagreements. You can literally rip your company apart.
The perfect number
The perfect number of founders for a startup is apparently 2.09 people. For a long time, people have believed it to be three. The true answer probably depends on the type of company you are, but we would not recommend you take the founding members number any higher than four.
The reason for this is simple. Have you ever heard the saying ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’? If there are too many people making decisions you can almost guarantee that there will be too many opposing opinions, and that will make it almost impossible to find a compromise.
Join LeaderBridge – The platform for founders’ to solve challenges
LeaderBridge is a place where start-up founders can ask questions anonymously and network with their peers. There is no spam, job hunting or recruitment allowed, so you can use our platform for the purpose it was intended.
We’ve launched our beta offering, which means you can sign up for free in exchange for feedback.
For more information about what we do, visit our ‘Why LeaderBridge’ page. If you are ready to sign up, you can do that here.
