When it comes to building a successful business, you need all kinds of different personalities to make it work. On a basic level, you want strategists, sales gurus, and finance wizards. But going deeper, startups actually need special breeds of individuals in their own right to get off the ground. Remember, founding a business is very different from running an established firm.
So who do you need on your start dream team? Let’s take a look.
The Systems Person
Systems people like organizing the world into manageable chunks and then looking for efficiencies. They can transform your business from an inefficient mess to running like clockwork almost single-handedly. Their skill is in uncovering the systemic issues that are harming productivity and ironing them out.
What’s amazing about their work is how fast they do it. They can increase output per worker by an order of magnitude, simply by implementing a new strategy. Ultimately they make everything you do smoother.
The International Person
Startups often need an international person who can liaise between head office and outsourced operations on the ground. In other words, they need somebody who can form a cultural and linguistic bridge between your brand and any third-party services you’re using.
Whenever hiring internationally, always use immigration lawyers. Make sure that you get the people you need on the right visas, otherwise, they might not be allowed to work for you.
The Intellectual
Intellectuals get a bad rap in the startup community. You want “doers” not “thinkers,” right?
Well, it all comes back to diversity. Having an intellectual on the team actually helps you to rationalize your decisions. You want somebody with a highly analytical mind: a person who can delve into the evidence and back up your intuition with data. They can warn you early if you’re going down the wrong path.
The Peacemaker
We all know how difficult it can be to work in a startup. You’re under tremendous pressure to perform and sell. And any wrong move can mean the failure of the enterprise.
In high-stress conditions like this, the peacemaker is the person who keeps all the relationships together. They use their emotional intelligence to ensure that everyone gets along, even when working towards a hard deadline. In many ways, they are the critical link in the chain, ensuring that people feel motivated to do what’s best for the startup as a whole.
The Pragmatic Person
While every company needs to hire a visionary, it also needs pragmatists who can get it done. Finding people like this in the modern world, however, isn’t always easy.
A pragmatist is somebody who can take a dream and make it a reality. They love working through all of the impediments and making it work. They don’t mind so much about the letter of the law, so long as they abide by it in spirit.
The Salesperson
Lastly, you want somebody in your organization who really understands what your audience wants. Yes – you can hire salespeople easily. But only a small fraction of them know how to get under your customers’ skin and encourage them to hand over their hard-earned cash.
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