Profiles of the founders: to vary or not?
Whether engineers, salespeople or financiers, creators have backgrounds, backgrounds and personalities that can be very different from one another. Should you associate with your clone or look for the difference?
Surrounding yourself with clones has the advantage of not creating conflict, because they very often go in the same direction as their alter ego and more easily share the same vision. The different profiles very often generate tensions and diverging opinions, especially at the beginning of the adventure, when many questions arise. They do not hesitate to question decisions when certain outward signs appear. On the other hand, who says difference says complementarity and contribution of skills. This is undoubtedly one of the potential sources of creativity and significant progress.
A development phase that can vary useful skills
In the beginning, creators tend to grope their way as they imagine a scenario for their launch and more often than not that scenario changes along the way. There are many unknowns in the development stages of a start-up . All of this creates a natural instability that requires permanent adaptation and great reactivity. This is why the starting team must be both very strong and united in the face of the vagaries of entrepreneurship.
A founding team made up solely of engineers to design and sell technology products and services is therefore completely legitimate in the start-up phase. However, comes the phase of the first sales which will generally have to be carried out by the founders because it is often the only means available. This phase generally requires other skills that the creator-engineer will not be able to discharge to a salesperson or a sales manager, for lack of means and which he will therefore have to carry out by himself. After the first sales made and a stabilized offer, things can still change, the useful profiles therefore vary according to time
Assets of a start-up
Another question: whether the founders form a real team that will not fall apart during the flight at the slightest turbulence. At the beginning, the offer is often basic, the number of customers insignificant and the turnover low or even non-existent. And yet it is at this precise moment that you have to start convincing your company’s stakeholders: associates, customers, partners, employees, investors, etc. and that it is necessary to define what will happen thereafter because the vision of the future may subsequently diverge. This is also one of the reasons that leads to the conflict between partners.
For investors, it is the team that generally takes precedence over the project and the idea, because one cannot demand an ideal business plan from a company that has just been born. Indeed, a young company must constantly adapt and sometimes consider 360° orientation changes. On the other hand, the BA and VC are much more careful about the reliability of the team.
It should be noted that many do not hesitate to spend time with the team to better understand the individual personalities, the synergies they create and better assess their real development potential. This is an essential point because it is the team that represents the main asset of a start-up .
