An Ideal Founding Team of a Tech Startup

It’s not a secret that a vast number of tech startups pop up each year. Even the COVID did not deter young entrepreneurs. In March 2020, there were 804,398 businesses that were less than 1 year old in the USA alone. But a majority of tech startups never see the light of success and the lack of a cohesive founding team is one of the key reasons for that.

Despite having a brilliant idea, an incomplete founding team can overpower pretty much everything else. As the stakes get higher, risks increase and responsibilities get heavier, the gaps in your founding team will begin to show.

So how can you ensure that your idea is backed by an invincible and ideal founding team?

Building the ideal team

Your first order of business in the quest to build an A-team is realizing what you truly need in your co-founders. You may have anywhere between two to five co-founders, although I believe three co-founders with distinct roles make for an ideal team. Whichever path you choose, it is imperative that you have at least one co-founder. Doing it all alone is emotionally draining, psychologically challenging, and significantly reduces your chances of success.

The reason I recommend three is that the CEO can truly focus on core responsibilities while the other two co-founders can operate the business.

But what do the roles of these three founders entail? Let’s get into that.

The People Charmer (CEO)

Your startup is nothing but a community of people who are your employee, customers, advisors, investors, partners, evangelists, and fans. The CEO’s primary job is to build this community and have financial resources to support the community. She needs to engage in fruitful and proactive communication with this community, so as to attract, engage and most importantly, retain these people. All of this heavily contributes to building a successful venture.

She has to be a people charmer — selling the vision, a great storyteller, bringing people together, empowering and enabling people to do great things, creating the right environment, and continually growing a happy community.

Tech Genius (CTO)

We’re talking about tech startups, and technology is at the heart of such endeavors. For the CEO’s charming words to have credibility, you need a CTO who’s a visionary who can back the CEO’s claims with robust and innovative technology. Your CTO should be a tech genius with excellent problem-solving skills, exemplary business acumen, a born leader who can guide the team, as well as somebody who’s empathetic and vigilant about customer’s pain points.

She is the foundation of your founders’ team. Not having the right CTO will halt your progress, making the whole journey painful. It is definitely worth finding a great CTO.

Growth Magician (CRO)

The world often assesses startup valuation based on the metrics of “growth”. Whether you are a B2C or a B2B startup, you need to define your growth metrics, which could vary from growth in revenue, number of users, number of shipped items, and so on. In the B2B world, someone who owns the growth metrics is called Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

While your CTO builds the most amazing technology and your CEO creates a like-minded community that’s excited about your product, it is your CRO who ensures that your business witnesses the growth. She is someone who is very creative, great at experimenting, is well-versed in human psychology and behavior, has ample experience, is familiar with this role, can solve problems, and brings the magic!

5 Key Characteristics

These are the top 5 characteristics your founding team should have:

Passionate about the problem

The reason you founded your start-up is that you are passionate about the problem. The whole founding team must be passionate about solving the problem. It is this passion that will keep you and your team fired up, ready to face any challenge. This passion will create shared dreams and values that’ll go a long way.

Complimentary skills

Your founding team members should complement each other’s skills and knowledge. It’s not necessary or expected for each member to possess the entire spectrum of skills and wisdom required to build the start-up, but where one team member lacks, the others should lead. In such a case, it is helpful to build a roadmap to develop the required skills as your startup grows.

Successful track records in their respective fields

When I say track records, three things come to mind — Educational track record, Industry Track record, and Start-up track record. While educational accomplishments don’t matter to a certain extent, your founding team members must have proved their prowess in their respective fields. It’s preferred if they have prior experiences with start-ups.

Unconditional trust, respect, and care for each other

Building a startup is a long and painful journey with very low success rates. Every company goes through a lot of tough times, including the most successful ones. You need a team that can trust, respect and cares for each other unconditionally. Because that’s what will keep you united. But all this is easier said than done.

It’s tricky to know whether your co-founders truly trust each other or not unless they know each other well. You want your founding team to have prior experience of working together in a professional setting, maybe they were schoolmates or are friends or family. And, they must have demonstrated trust, respect, and care for each other.

Amazing Problem Solvers

Not only your founding team but everyone in your company must be amazing problem solvers. Your startup will be facing gazillions of challenges every month and you need people who can solve them as they come. An ideal founding team will always see challenges as opportunities; they will come up with solutions rather than complaints. If your founding team is great at it, it will start reflecting in your culture and more problem solvers will join your community.

As your start-up grows, you’ll have more gaps to fill and more roles to assign but with a strong founding team in place, you should be able to take on pretty much anything!

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