In the early days of most startups, you are your business. You wear every hat, fill every role... your motto is, "If it is to be, it's up to me."
If you want to grow, though, eventually you can't do it all. You want people on that wall with you. You need people on that wall. (Hi, Jack.)
But how do you choose the right people? What are the attributes and characteristics new employees need to create an ideal A-team?
The following is from Jamie Domenici, VP of Product Marketing and SMB Marketing for Salesforce.
A smart business owner knows the importance of building a strong leadership team -- one that can bring your vision to life and effectively run the various areas of your business. It's particularly important as your company makes the transition from a small startup, where founders take calls from customers and can shout to each other across the garage, to a mid-size business employing hundreds.
As most companies grow, they hit an inflection point when they require a totally different type of leadership style and need to adjust their hiring criteria. Obviously, you want to continue to hire smart people with a passion for your business. But what are the other things you need to look for?
Keep these qualities in mind as you go about hiring your own small business A-team.
When your business is small, you need people who can wear many different hats and step in to fight fires, wherever they might pop up. But as your company grows, it's no longer feasible to bring the executive team in on every decision.
And it's not as important to have people who can work well cross-functionally. You need leaders with deep functional knowledge so you can delegate to them and then step away.
Let them worry about their areas, so you don't have to.
Young startups are often filled by highly-creative, superstar individual contributors. The kind of people who are motivated by praise and will work at warp-speed to deliver their projects.
And while I don't mean to imply that you don't need creative, energetic people as your company grows, other skills become important too.
