We ran across this blog that profiles different types of people involved in start-ups. It may be helpful as you think about how to build a team that works well together….

Profiles of Start Up Players

A little over a year ago, I attended the “Building Successful Teams” panel at LAVA’s Investment Capital Conference.  I was blown away by the great advice the panelists had to offer, particularly with regards to team chemistry.  If I took away one thing from the panel it was the importance of teamwork as explained in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Ted Alexander of Mission Ventures.  Coming from the ivory tower world of consulting, I hadn’t really given much thought to how important teams and relationships are to the success of a startup.

Since that panel, I’ve constantly been thinking about how to improve teamwork.  A half-dozen management personalities, in a high-stress, rapidly changing, high-cash burn environment can result in unusual team chemistry.  Emotional reactions, heated debates, passive-aggressiveness are all too common among early stage management teams.  However, this isn’t necessarily bad if such dynamics are channeled into startup energy, and thus the team is able to become a more productive group.

I recently came across a post by Will Price of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, who offers some excellent advice.

In managing start-ups and in building a culture open to change and to iteration, it really helps to arm the team to recognize that under stress we tend to react badly, and in the negative reaction we hamper the ability to maintain cohesion and our credibility.

It is  important to ask people to be self-aware of their coping mechanisms and yours, to be aware of what triggers a negative reaction, and to develop good tools for effectively processing stress and defusing tension.

Some well known tools involve, listening, asking questions and for clarification, remembering not to take things personally, patience, acknowledgment of others, being dependable and trustworthy.

I think we can all recall instances where we could have used those tools to improve teamwork, and perhaps as many instances where we noticed others who could have done the same.  Next time we find ourselves in a high-stress, conflict ridden situations, be sure to take a second to think about the situation, the consequences of reactions and what can be done to resolve.

Some of you may be attending the upcoming Harvard Business School Entrepreneurs Conference on Monday May 19^th in Anaheim, CA. As these things go it is definitely one of the better early stage events. While it does attract its share of service providers, it also seems to attract a nice cross section of entrepreneurs. I think this will be the 6^th year that I have attended. This year one of my other Momentum partners, Matt Ridenour, and I will be speaking on the panels. I am particularly excited about the topic that my panel (first panel of the day at 9AM) addresses: Do You Have the Right Stuff? Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs. Continue Reading »

On Friday, I moderated the Idea Validation panel at UCLA’s Anderson School Entrepreneurs conference. Thanks again to the four panelists – Jimmy Henricks and Patrick Dillon, co-founders of www.collarfree.com; Dr. Vladimir Ban, CEO of PD-LD, Inc.; and David Silver, author of Smart Start-Ups and President of Santa Fe Capital Group – all of whom pulled from their own experiences give helpful advice on how to think about validating a startup business idea.

One discussion item really stuck with me after the panel – whether women entrepreneurs face a tougher road when trying to raise venture capital. A panelist made the observation that women have a tougher time raising capital than do men and in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way, advised women to partner with men if they were to hope to raise funds. Several members of the audience disagreed strongly including an ex-associate from a Sand Hill Road VC and a fund-to-fund expert who made the point that “VC’s want to make money and couldn’t care less what you look like if there is a good ROI to be made.” I tend to agree with the audience but would love to hear what others with personal experience have to say on the point. I know several woman entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated the VC process and don’t recall any hearing about any specific bias against them. But I may be blind to the issue.

The panelist also cited data that supported his point. I do know there are fewer female venture funded entrepreneurs than there are male, but I’ve never seen any data that supports the claim that it’s the VC process that creates the disparity. If anyone has data, I’d love to see it.

A few weeks ago, I was a speaker in a session hosted by TechBizConnection, a southern California networking group for technology entrepreneurs. There were some great quotes by the other speakers in the event on the challenges of building a new company. I want to apologize in advance for not recalling who offered which quotes! Following are some of the best quotes I heard in this meeting and other places along the way.

“It’s like taking off in an airplane that hasn’t been built”: This refers to the challenge of creating a new company (constantly learning and changing plans) while at the same time trying to land first customers and sell new products. By the way, this reminds me of a topic dear to me - “Why You Shouldn’t Write a Business Plan“. Continue Reading »

Noam Wasserman, a professor at Harvard Business School, came up with a core concept about startup founder motivations:

Rich versus King?

Academics are long known for coming up with interesting, but relatively impracticable concepts. This is not one of them. Founders need to understand their motivation for starting the company. By taking time out in the early stages to understand why you are building the company, you can avoid a lot of heartache and headache down the road. Continue Reading »

In 2005, I followed in the footsteps of many other Los Angeles-based entrepreneurs. I moved our internet startup, Insider Pages, from Southern California to Silicon Valley. While we knew it would be a huge disruption to a fledgling company, we did it for some good reasons – access to capital, engineering talent, and a bubbling ecosystem of ideas, energy and innovation. It was the right move — Silicon Valley turned out to be everything we’d hoped for and more. In a few months, we’d built a top tier engineering team, attracted successful product and marketing people from other Silicon Valley companies, and had started building a network of business development relationships with other Silicon Valley firms. Continue Reading »

As we all know, creating a successful start up is much more of an art than science. While classic business disciplines may be helpful, there is a tremendous amount of intuition that distinguishes truly great entrepreneurs from the rest of the pack. While I could discuss many of these dimensions, I’d like to focus on one in particular: when and how to systematize your product development process. One venture capitalist friend coined a terrific phrase that is the title of this post: “From Cowboy to Machine.” Continue Reading »

I recently got a note from Jack Bicer, a friend who heads up TechBizConnection (Orange County networking group) as well as Septium (a custom software development firm). He passed along the following tips on managing a software development process. I think the list is right on target and has the advantage of being both powerful and concise. Continue Reading »