How to Get a Good Startup Team?

A good team and a bad one may often spell the difference between a successful startup and a failing one. How do you get a good one, though? 

Here are a few tips to guide you through the landmine: 

1.   Hire right.

Startups, by necessity, have to be a lean team. Resources are limitedand have to be maximized. This is often why for startups, like those in Singapore virtual office arrangements are ideal.As more and more startups launch in Singapore, virtual office or even serviced office set-ups are also starting to become the norm for these companies. 

This is also why a single bad hire could have negative repercussions on everyone. Imagine you have five people on the team. If even one or two out of those five aren’t delivering on quantity and quality, you already have a big problem. Your team could miss deadlines. 

And if one or two of the good employees you have need to take over or help the non-performing employees, then that’s also a waste of time and effort for those employees since they could be doing something else already—instead of fixing the work of someone who really does not have the right skills for the job—and who got hired only because it was urgent and there was no one else available. 

2.   Choose passionate people. 

Passion and drive often set great people apart from the rest. They don’t give up. They work the hardest. And they invest, they put a lot into their work. These kinds of employees are the backbone of every successful company. So if you find a team of these people, don’t ever let them go. 

3.   Nurture excellence and attitude. 

Excellence is good. But excellence coupled with the right attitude is better. Positivity is often a great motivator. People respond better with positivity. This also improves the quality of communication among your people, one that is often reflected in the output. You have teams reaching their targets, finishing way before their deadlines. Those are admirable and should be encouraged. 

4.   Permit mistakes. 

Do this not because you want to encourage mistakes but because you want to encourage learning. Teach them not to dwell on those mistakes but on how to fix those mistakes and move on from there. This will not only train your team not to fear mistakes, it will also teach them the value of focusing on what can be done rather than waste time looking for someone to blame. 

5.   Build a culture of teamwork. 

Build a team whose members care about each other. Admittedly, this is not going to be obvious when you hire your people. But if you hire right—that they share the same vision and work ethic that you have—it won’t be long before you have employees that are friendly, even close to each other, and who will be all too willing to help out even before you ask.