How I created my initial Startup Team
Over the last two days I got to talk with students at both my high school and
my college. In both cases, the students were all interested in potentially
starting their own business someday, and my goodness did they have a lot of
questions. One of my favourite topics that usually comes up is how to put
together an initial team to actually work on the project!
Those of you who've involved with Deepiotics know that Bhawna, Rahul and I got
together and worked on completely different ideas before ultimately coming up
with the idea of bringing an AI start-up. We actually started back in 2003, but
didn't launch anything until 2005. What this means, though, is that we decided
that we liked working together and that we were a really strong team, so even
if we started in on one project and decided we didn't like it, we stayed
together and worked on the next one.
I tried to start a bunch of startups before Deepiotics...and they all, more or
less, failed. A common factor, I think, was that I tried to do them myself...I
didn't find other really great people to team up with. The reality, of course,
is that any given person is only knowledgeable in a relatively narrow field.
Sure, I can raise a round of funding, but I could never actually build Deepiotics.
In
the core team, If you look at unique skills, you notice that they too are very
complimentary to each other.
The
team that you work with to do a startup is incredibly important. You really
want to find people who are NOT like you...who have unique skills that
compliment your weaknesses (me: attention to detail...not so good!). So make
sure you branch out and find folks who compliment you, and perhaps above all,
make sure you all really love working together...you'll be spending many
sleepless nights working together!
Ayan
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