4. Team

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Part 1: Founders

Flickr: zacharyparadis

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How many?

1-4 “reasonable” size of founder team

1 founder: total control but expensive, lonely and slow

2 founders: the magic number. “one builds, one sells”

3-4 founders: can make a great dev team but leader needed

>4 founders: crazy unless some are “passive”

“Everyone obsesses with dilution from investors. The biggest dilution comes from co-founders.”

– @msuster

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Flickr: oskay

2 founder dynamics

http://venturehacks.com/articles/pick-cofounder

Jobs and WozniakAllen and Gates

Hewlett and PackardLarry and Sergei

Yang and Filo

“The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building

products and the other is good at selling them” – @venturehacks

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Finding founders & early employees

Share ideas, be open

Co-founders need to be people you trust, preferably people you worked with before

You want broad skills and doers

Controversial but interesting: vesting founder shares (VCs will ask for this)

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Size matters

Output is not linear in # employees

Most efficient (development) team is ~4

Over ~15 “formal” organization and information channels becomes increasingly important

Avoid hiring admin staff or positions that don’t “produce” anything(non-coding proj manager, office manager...) as long as possible.

Ideally, never hire such persons.

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Part 2: Hiring staff

Flickr: yodelanecdotal

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Where to find them?

1. By recommendation (both ways!)

2. Events and conferences

3. LinkedIn!

Avoid recruitment agencies at all cost. Waste of time and money.

Never hire unless you absolutely must.Are you sure you need to hire now?

Flickr: bouldair

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Interviewing and testing

Early on, look for people that are bright, broad with potential to grow

Always test developers

Don’t underestimate team fit (personality)

Never hire without trial period

Computer vision team should have a mix of skills “theoretical”-”practical” and people that can make demos.

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Stock options and motivation

MotivationMoney is not motivation (competitors ALWAYS pay more)Good motivators are similar to founders’ motivators (build something, dynamic organization, make a difference, ...)Warning: people with “big-co” motivation (titles, salary, career, benefits, “security”)

Stock optionsGood idea if exit is the goalIf possible create options pool post investmentBeware: rules and taxes vary a lot between countries!

What is special about Vision?In terms of building teams

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What’s special about Vision?

Academic research groups can be a great “extension” to your R&D team

Small vision teams can go far, no need to overstaff

How we did it

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Polar Rose: How we did it

1. Founder + key early employees

2. Built 2 dev teams (vision + infrastructure)

Hiring process:

Initially friends and connections from universityNetworks of a few key employees (especially France and Poland)

LinkedIn - search, search, search

Trial period in ALL contracts

Stock options (legal & tax mess with multi-national team)

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Kooaba: How we did it

Founders + 1 key early employee (first employee needed to be changed, lost lots of time)Built two dev teams (vision + interfaces (web, mobile))

Was hard to find initial employees

Work permit problems

Hiring process:Initially friends and connections from university

Networks of a employees

LinkedIn - post job offer (299 is cheap)Sales & Marketing hired from customer (EMI Music)

Employees are involved in interviewing process

Recently: testing day

Stocks (promised, formalized these days)

We are hiring later this year!!

Q & A

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Resources

Founders:http://venturehacks.com/articles/pick-cofounder (Picking co-founders)

Hiring:xxx