Building a Strong Team for a Tech Startup

Most founders think hiring smart people = building a great team. I learned this lesson the hard way... Watched my first startup crumble because I had brilliant people who couldn't execute together. Raw talent means nothing without accountability. Here's what actually builds strong teams: 1. Clear expectations from day one → Written responsibilities → Measurable outcomes → Regular check-ins 2. Systems over willpower → Daily standups & end of day reports → Weekly metrics reviews → Monthly alignment sessions 3. Consequences matter → Reward overperformance → Address underperformance immediately → Let go of toxic talent fast But the real game-changer? Leading by example. When the team sees you holding yourself accountable first, everything changes. I've seen companies 10x their output just by implementing these principles. Smart people are everywhere. Accountable teams are rare. That could be your competitive advantage.

I’ve made well over $10M+ worth of hiring mistakes. Looking back, I really wish I had a cheat sheet for building a team at my first startup. So I wrote one...   Here are 19 learnings about building a team I wish I had known sooner:                                                  1/ Co-founders you trust and like are FAR better than co-founders with complementary skill sets. 2/ Go slow with Advisors; make someone demonstrate a persistent interest in you and your company before issuing shares or compensation. 3/ If you are constantly using your authority to get your team to do things as you see them, something is wrong. Instead try to use data, logic, and persuasion. 4/ Related to the above, if you are ALWAYS right, something is wrong or people are lying to you. Accept when the data is not in your favor and admit when you were mistaken. 5/ Invest in training and development early. For yourself and your whole team. Hard skills and soft skills. This is incredibly high leverage and high ROI. 6/ Retained executive search can be incredibly valuable as they have the ability to bring candidates who you couldn't bring on your own. 7/ Your (at least) first 20 hires join because of you and your vision. Realize what that means as you run the company. 8/ Compensation is NOT the top motivator of most people. Working on something interesting, and seeing their impact on the bigger picture usually is. 9/ As a founder/owner/manager, you are not the same as your team. Even if you sit next to them, joke around and hang out. Your ability to impact someone's career (and therefore their life) makes you different. The sooner you realize this, the better you will be at your job. 10/ If your goal is to be liked by everyone, you will likely fail and not be a good founder/leader.   Your job is the success of the company first, and ideally to be respected and understood by your team. 11/ When it comes to business results, be ruthless. But when it comes to individuals, be very compassionate. 12/ Almost without fail, if at any point you think in your head, "this person is not good, we should let them go," then you are probably right. Try to do it as soon as possible but compassionately. 13/ Have company lore. Humans have been passing on stories verbally for ages. This adds to the fun of company building and binds people together more closely. 14/ Leading and managing people well is NOT an innate talent. Get a coach and a mentor and learn as much as you can. You will improve continually over time. 15/ A great lawyer is worth it. A great lawyer has an opinion and can explain it well. Bad lawyers/advisors either ask you to take their word for it or worse, do whatever you ask and then send you the bill. 16/ People are people. They are all different from each other; they all have good days and bad days, and everyone enjoys being recognized and praised. People need to be motivated, guided, and empowered. What are your hardest “people” related lessons?

I often see many startups conducting  intensely rigorous, FAANG-style technical interviews. In my view, this is frequently counterproductive and a waste of time. If you're an early stage startup, you don't need to hire experts who can build massive scale systems like Google or Meta right out the gate. What you need are smart, adaptable team players who can get an MVP launched. My advice is to focus on hiring for general programming competency, business domain knowledge, and cultural fit. Look for people who can develop APIs, configure cloud services, and write just enough code to get your product off the ground. Even if you aim to someday scale to millions of users, today's abundant managed services enable that without reinventing the wheel. The priority should be launching a solid v1. Implementing convoluted algorithm tests and system design exercises often deters great candidates for no good reason. Of course, technical rigor matters at some point. But initially, prioritize hiring product-focused builders who understand the business challenges and can evolve with the company. Ultra-complex interviews are overkill for most early stage needs. While tempting to emulate big tech, that bar often doesn't make sense. Focus on the skills that will propel your core product forward and avoid deterring strong startup contributors unnecessarily.

Do you feel part of a real team? Or are there moments when you feel isolated, uncertain, and disconnected, even though you're surrounded by colleagues? In the early stages of my career, I had the simplistic view that bringing together a bunch of high achievers would naturally create an outstanding team. However, the reality was quite different. Instead of creating synergy, there was noticeable discord. The team didn't seem to gel; it was akin to cogs not aligning in a machine. Every top performer, exceptional in their own right, appeared to follow their own path, often pulling in different directions. The amount of energy and time lost to internal strife was significant, and the expected outcomes? They remained just that – expected. This experience was a clear lesson that the success of a team isn't merely based on individual talent; it's about harmony, alignment, and collaboration. With today’s workplaces being more diverse, widespread, digitized, and ever-changing, achieving this is certainly challenging. So, in my quest to understand the nuances of high-performing teams, I reached out to my friend Hari Haralambiev. As a coach of dev teams who care about people, Hari has worked with numerous tech organizations, guiding them to unlock their teams’ potential. Here are his top 5 tips for developing high performing teams: 1. Be Inclusive ↳Put a structure in place so that the most vocal people don’t suffocate the silent voices. Great teams make sure minority views are heard and taken into account. They make it safe for people to speak up. 2. Leverage Conflict ↳Disagreements should be encouraged and how you handle them is what makes your team poor or great. Great teams mine for conflict - they cherish disagreements. To handle disagreements properly make sure to separate discussion from decision. 3. Decision Making Process ↳Have a clear team decision-making method to resolve conflicts quickly. The most important decision a team should make is how to make decisions. Don’t look for 100% agreement. Look for 100% commitment. 4. Care and Connect ↳This is by far the most important tip. Teams who are oriented only on results are not high-performing. You need to create psychological safety and build trust between people. To do that - focus on actually knowing the other people and to make it safe to be vulnerable in front of others. Say these 4 phrases more often: ‘I don’t know’, ‘I made a mistake’, ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I need help’. 5. Reward experimentation and risk taking ↳No solution is 100% certain. People should feel safe to take risks and make mistakes. Reward smart failure. Over-communicate that it’s better to take action and take accountability than play it safe. Remember, 'team' isn't just a noun—it's a verb. It requires ongoing effort and commitment to work at it, refine it, and nurture it. Do give Hari a follow and join over 6K+ professionals who receive his leadership comics in his newsletter A Leader’s Tale.

Superbuilders Founders: do you have at least one superbuilder on your team? This is an engineer who is amazing at building stuff, whether infrastructure or customer facing, whatever new technology or system they have to learn. They are super fast at learning, converting high level vision statements into clear tangible engineering milestones, iterating, building and launching. They are the people you put on the hardest technology problems, when you don’t truly have a clear path forward, when all seems lost, when time is of the essence. Superbuilders go beyond the traditional definition of a 10x engineer, because such a person is not evaluated merely (!) based on their technical prowess but in their ability to ship pragmatic solutions with a high level of excellence. Superbuilders emerge from diverse technical backgrounds - some are CS Ph.D.s who have built complex distributed systems, others are self-taught programmers who've spent years building and shipping products independently. What unites them is a track record of independently driving ambitious technical projects to completion. Many have experience as early employees at successful startups or have led critical infrastructure projects at major tech companies. They typically have deep expertise in multiple domains, whether it's distributed systems, ML infrastructure, frontend frameworks, or mobile development. However, their true distinguishing characteristic is their ability to rapidly master new domains and technologies as needed, paired with an uncanny sense of knowing exactly which technical tradeoffs will deliver the most business value. Adding a superbuilder to an engineering team transforms the engineering culture, because it gives the other engineers a role model to aspire to, and shows them what’s possible. Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat were the first superbuilders I met, twenty years ago. Google wouldn’t be Alphabet without them. Similarly, without at least 1 superbuilder every X (the smaller the better, ideally 20-25) engineers, your startup won’t be able to accomplish your full potential. Be honest with yourself about whether you have superbuilders to round out your engineering team. Look for engineers who consistently deliver complex projects, whom other engineers naturally gravitate towards for technical guidance, and who have a track record of turning vague requirements into elegant, scalable solutions. You'll recognize them by how frequently they become the go-to person for understanding entire systems they didn't build, and by their ability to rapidly prototype solutions while simultaneously considering scale, security, and maintainability. If you don’t have engineers like this, open a requisition. You will not regret it.

Your team doesn’t need a genius. They need someone who keeps promises, gives feedback, and raises the damn energy. But here’s the part no one warns you about: Startups rarely fall apart because of bad strategy. They fall apart when the founder unravels - burnout, fear, avoidance, ego. Not in one blow. Bit by bit: Trust erodes. People stop speaking up. You stop showing up as the person they believed in. And by the time it cracks? No offsite, no Slack emoji, no $100 gift card is saving it. The “founder starter pack” skips the most important part: intentional leadership. You can’t scale what your leadership can’t hold. It’s not IQ. Not charisma. Not a brilliant GTM plan. It’s the small, brutal, invisible stuff. The kind no one claps for But everyone feels when it’s missing: 1/ Saying no ↳ Every “yes” you don’t mean slices into your team’s focus. 2/ Asking for help ↳ Especially when your ego says, “Just push through.” 3/ Being coachable ↳ When feedback stings and you stay in the room anyway. 4/ Owning mistakes ↳ Not in a 7 PM Slack DM. Out loud. So your team knows it’s safe to grow. 5/ Controlling emotions ↳ Feel them. Process them. Don’t dump them on your people. 6/ Leading with empathy ↳ When the numbers are down and the pressure is up and you still choose grace. 7/ Keeping commitments ↳ Not just the big launch. The 10 AM 1:1. On time. Every time. 8/ Showing vulnerability ↳ “I don’t know either.” That’s leadership, too. 9/ Giving real feedback ↳ Clear. Direct. Specific. Not flattery. Not silence. Something they can use today. 10/ Encouraging diverse thinking ↳ Let the quiet voice speak. It might see what you can’t. 11/ Raising the energy in every room ↳ You don’t have to be loud. You have to be present and intentional. This isn’t the sexy stuff that gets you featured on TechCrunch or the “30 under 30” list. But it’s what keeps your team in the damn fight. Nobody teaches this. But every founder who sticks around learns it - usually the hard way. Which skill resonates most with you? ♻️ Share this with a founder who’s in the thick of it And follow Mariya Valeva for more

I think the primary reason why I keep signing up for startup after startup is I just love building teams. I've spent most of my career as the business partner to great, technical founders-- my most meaningful contributions are inevitably building and nurturing the "people engines" that turns ideas into products, products into revenue, etc. The primary advice I give founders when building their teams: 1.) Hire for high horsepower, generalists. If you're at all successful, the company is going to reinvent itself a dozen times over the next 18 months. What your company needs will change dramatically month over month. Specialization is for scaling, not starting. 2.) Optimize for a few GREAT hires. I'd much rather pay a premium for someone highly-motivated with lots and lots of potential than hire several "good enough" teammates. Championship teams are rarely ensembles. 3.) I think of building my team culture thought the framework of "skill vs will" or "trust vs performance" (Simon Sinek has a great short on this here: https://lnkd.in/g9nFkaRM). Startups are incredibly difficult, I need to build a team that is going to try really hard to solve nearly impossible problems. I need to build an organization that encourages taking big swings that is okay striking out frequently. You can test for this when you ask about the companies or projects folks have worked on that failed. Their attitude toward those failures will inform how well they'll support a high-trust, high-willpower org. 4.) Hire curious people who love to teach others about things. Along with the above points about problem solving, the lifeblood of your success is people who can make abstract connections and can then communicate why ABC is a lot like solved problem XYZ and thus we can use similar methods to solve ABC.

Recruitment is one of the most challenging things you will do. 😮💨 Especially if you are a founder or involved in an early-stage startup. Finding people who are: ➡️ In line with your vision ➡️ Have the right skills with enthusiasm ➡️ Passionate to put in the work And match the culture you are trying to build. It gets tougher than you think. Having had experience building teams in this environment, here are my two cents on what you should be focusing on: Stage 1 (1—10 employees): Look for individual contributors and people who wear multiple hats. These first hires? They're your company's DNA. You want versatile problem-solvers who can juggle multiple roles. Look for people who: -Thrive on ambiguity -Can strategize AND execute -Share your vision and passion Stage 2 (11- 50 employees): Those who will get the work done Now you're scaling fast. You need people who can: -Take initiative without hand-holding -Organize chaos into processes -Adapt to rapid change Stage 3 (50 - 200 employees): Position players This is where it gets tricky. You're looking for: -Domain experts for specific roles -A mix of seasoned pros and rising stars -People who can build and lead teams Don't be afraid to look beyond your network. The perfect fit might be in an unexpected place. Stage 4 (200+ employees): Specialist/leadership hiring Time to bring in the big guns! -Strong leaders for each department -Fresh grads with cutting-edge skills -People who can 10x your business At this stage, your employer brand matters. Make sure you're attracting top talent. Securing the right team members can catapult a company's growth and build an incredible company culture. Did I miss out on any crucial points? Let me know in the comments!

I’ve been building my startup - Dock - for three years. We now have 250 paying customers and have closed more revenue this year than all the previous years combined. Here are five company-building lessons I’ve learned along the way: 1) Founder relationships are crucial The founding group - Victor, Luc, and myself - are the heartbeat of the organization. Our relationship works because we have complimentary skills. We’re experts in our own fields (engineering, design, and GTM) and trust each other to make decisions. Above all else, having people in the trenches alongside you makes it easier to navigate the ups & downs of building a startup. 2) Hybrid organizations are the future Dock started as a fully remote company, allowing us to access incredible talent from all over the world. Over time, we’ve drifted to a hybrid organization with a small office in San Francisco. I’ve found that in-person time has been critical to our success. We’re able to discuss complex product decisions that would have been impossible over Zoom. It’s also easier to focus on work in an office without the distractions of home life. 3) Iteration is key to building successful startups  We've made many mistakes while building Dock. We tried to be fully product-led and started to build a product that solved too many problems for too many people. The list goes on. However, through daily iteration, we've transformed Dock into a successful product. We narrowed our focus to revenue teams, rebuilt features until we got them right, and changed our GTM motion to be more sales-led. Your success is determined by how quickly you learn from your mistakes. 4) Amazing hires drive growth Dock's growth has been propelled by the talented people we've hired. Joey transformed our sales motion. Madison has elevated our customer onboarding and support. Eric has built an inbound machine. Arpit and Segun have developed key features that our customers use daily. I wish I could mention everyone at Dock because each person's contribution is significant. By hiring exceptional people, I've been able to focus on my strengths - building an awesome (and useful) product and spreading the word about Dock. Since expanding the team, our revenue has tripled. 5) Startups require patience Building great software takes time. Customers have high expectations and won't settle for a subpar MVP solution. You need to build high-quality software that solves a unique problem for your customers. This is an iterative process of building, collecting feedback, and refining. When you're in the middle of this process, progress can feel slow, but the work compounds over time. This happens with both the product and the GTM side of things. You start to build a brand, refine your sales process, and improve SEO. Suddenly, you begin to see tangible progress and revenue increases. The past three years have been a challenging, but rewarding experience. There’s nothing better than building something that people love.